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Measures of binaural hearing in children with a history of asymmetric otitis media with effusion.

This study addresses the effect of early asymmetric hearing loss in children, owing to otitis media with effusion (OME), on binaural hearing. Five children who had suffered from predominantly unilateral OME between the ages of 2 and 4 years and who were not treated for OME at any time participated in this study when they were about 12 years of age. All children had normal hearing at the time of testing. Data were compared to normative values obtained previously from normal-hearing adults. We measured the auditory brainstem response (ABR), the binaural interaction component (BIC) in the ABR, the masking level difference (MLD) and the suppression of transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) with contralateral noise stimulation. The results indicated that the children's ABRs and BICs were comparable to normative data, that there was evident suppression of transient evoked OAEs in 4 of the 5 children and that the children's MLD values were within the normal (adult) range. The present results therefore do not support the presence of long-term auditory processing deficits induced by early asymmetric OME in man.