The Effect of Otitis Media with Effusion on Language and Cognitive Skills in School Age Children

Objective: Otitis media with effusion (OME) is a common condition in childhood and can interfere with cognitive development. The fact that it can be easily overlooked causes it to become chronic and has negative consequences in the long term (1). The negative consequences of OME in terms of speech and language disorders include speech sound disorders and developmental language disorders. For this purpose, cases admitted to the speech and language therapy clinic were screened for OME consecutively, and its relationship with language disorders was analyzed. Materials and Methods: 50 children aged 8 to 10 years without mental retardation and hearing impairment were evaluated with audiology, language, repetition (non-word and sentence), and visual perceptual tests. In addition to standard language assessment, narrative samples were obtained and analyzed which is considered a descriptive approach. Results: 26 children were positive for OME. Children with OME scored lower on language and repetition tests. There was no significant difference between the groups with and without OME in terms of syntactic complexity, narrative skills and visual perceptual performance. The Mann-Whitney U test was used for the comparison of parameters between groups (p<0.05). Conclusion: The presence of OME negatively affected language development. However, the structural complexity dimension of storytelling, complex sentence production performance, and visual perceptual skills were not affected negatively by OME. Although OME positivity is not accompanied by mental retardation and developmental delay, language development and verbal working memory may be negatively affected. OME should be routinely screened in childhood and should be addressed more closely in children with speech and language disorders.