Management of middle ear effusions in infants with cleft palate.

Middle ear effusion is now generally recognized as a virtually universal complication in infants with cleft palate. Such infants may therefore be assumed to experience conductive hearing loss of some degree or other throughout infancy. Hoping to prevent not only deficits in intellectual and language development, but also permanent otic and auditory handicaps, we have routinely treated such infants as early as practicable with myringotomy and tympanostomy tube insertion. Subsequently, we have repeated the operation whenever blockage or extrusion of the tubes resulted in recurrence of persistent effusion. In this manner we have been able to maintain most infants in satisfactory middle ear status most of the time. Otorrhea, however, has been a frequent complication. Preliminary findings suggest that infants managed according to this regimen may eventually develop better language function than those not receiving such management. A current study is designed to test the advantages and disadvantages that might result from deferring the initial routine myringotomy until somewhate later in infancy.