Abstract:
OBJECTIVE : Investigating the impact of early childhood ventilation tube insertion (VTI)
on long-term language outcomes.
DESIGN : Longitudinal cohort study.
SETTING : A total of 2900 pregnant women participated in the Raine Study between
1989 and 1991 in Western Australia, and 2868 children have been followed up.
PARTICIPANTS : Based on parental reports, 314 children had a history of recurrent otitis
media but did not undergo VTI (rOM group); another 94 received VTI (VTI group);
while 1735 had no history of rOM (reference group) in the first 3 years of childhood.
Children with data on outcomes and confounders were included in analyses of
PPVT-R at ages 6 (n = 1567) and 10 years (n = 1313) and CELF-III at 10 years
(n = 1410) (approximately 5% in the VTI group and 15% in the rOM group).
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES : Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised edition and
Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals® Preschool-3.
RESULTS : At 6 years, mean PPVT-R scores were significantly lower in the VTI group
than the reference group (β = 3.3; 95% CI [ 6.5 to 0.04], p = .047). At 10 years,
while the difference between the VTI and reference groups was less pronounced
for PPVT-R scores, there was a small but consistent trend of lower measures, on
average, across CELF-III scores (expressive: β = 3.4 [ 7.1 to 0.27], p = .069;
receptive: β = 4.1 [ 7.9 to 0.34], p = .033; total: β = 3.9 [ 7.5 to 0.21],
p = .038). There was no evidence to suggest that language outcomes in the rOM
group differed from the reference group.
CONCLUSION : Lower scores of language outcomes in school-aged children who
received VTI in early childhood may suggest a long-term risk which should be considered
alongside the potential benefits of VTI.
