Comparison of temporalis muscle fascia and full-thickness cartilage grafts in type 1 tympanoplasty

Objective: To compare temporalis muscle fascia and full thickness tragal cartilage in type 1 tympanoplasty. Study design: Retrospective clinical chart review. Subjects and methods: In total, 247 patients (157 male, 90 female; average age of 33.67 +/- 13.07 years, range 18 to 65 years) who had been underwent type 1 tympanoplasty in our clinic were included in this study. Demographics, anatomical and functional outcomes were collected. Temporalis muscle fascia and tragal cartilage was used as graft material. The anatomical and functional outcomes of cartilage and fascia were compared. Audiometric results comparing the cartilage and fascia groups at six months also continued to patients follow up to one year after surgery. An intact graft and an air-bone gap (ABG) <= 20 dB were regarded as surgical success. Results with a p-value <0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: The graft success rate was 91.3 per cent of the cartilage group compared with 68.9 per cent of the temporalis fascia group, respectively. In the fascia group, preoperative ABG was 22.28 +/- 8.76 dB and postoperative ABG was 17.60 +/- 10.96 dB. In cartilage group, preoperative ABG was 22.43 +/- 8.07 dB and postoperative ABG was 14.93 +/- 8.69 dB. The anatomical success rate of cartilage group was better than fascia group statistically (P<0.01). There was no statistically significiant differences among functional outcomes between fascia and cartilage groups (P>0.05). Conclusion: Our data suggest that the anatomical success rate of cartilage tympanoplasty was higher compared with fascia tympanoplasty. Functional results with cartilage wasn't different than fascia despite we didn't thinning tragal cartilage.