Ventilation tubes and cholesteatoma.

Ventilation tubes (VTs) have been extensively used to treat chronic serous otitis media over the last 30 years. However, it is not known if this practice has affected the incidence of cholesteatoma. A retrospective study was carried out at two Regional ENT Centres in Northern Ireland, examining the clinical notes of all patients undergoing major ear surgery between 1965 and 1988. The incidence of cholesteatoma per operatively in this period varied from 0.01 to 0.16 per 1,000 of population per year. The total number of cholesteatomas in the first five years of the study was exactly equal to the number in the last five years, despite an eight-fold increase in VT insertion over this period. These results indicate that the incidence of cholesteatoma remained stable between 1965 and 1988 despite a huge increase in the use of VTs.