Day-case pediatric middle ear surgery: from myringoplasty to bilateral cochlear implantation.

Objective: In the English speaking literature there is very little evidence demonstrating safe and effective tympanomastoid day case surgery in pediatric practice. At a time when there is ongoing pressure for trusts to meet financial government targets and our care provision revolves around a patient centred approach, could otolaryngologists perform more pediatric middle ear surgery on a day case basis? We report our experience with a series of 52 pediatric middle ear day cases.

Method: Prospective study from a London tertiary referral centre of 52 consecutive children undergoing tympanomastoid surgery. There were 6 categories of surgical procedure, ranging from myringoplasty to cochlear implantation. Post-operative recovery was monitored. The duration of anaesthesia was compared with the length of post-operative ward stay.

Results: The correlation co-efficient r=-0.2203, showing that there was no association between length of anaesthetic and duration of post-operative ward stay.

Conclusions: Despite minor post-operative problems including pain, bleeding, and nausea and vomiting all patients in this series were discharged on the day of surgery. For tympanoplasty our series adds weight to already available evidence. It is the first series showing that mastoid surgery, whether combined approach, traditional mastoidectomy or cochlear implantation can be performed safely as day cases in a pediatric population.