Transmission of a novel sonotubometry acoustic click stimulus in healthy and patulous eustachian tube subjects: a retrospective case -control study

BACKGROUND: Eustachian tube (ET) dysfunction can be very difficult to diagnose accurately. Our aim is to determine whether a newly developed sonotubometric test using clicks can reliably detect ET opening during swallowing in normal ET subjects, and patulous ET (PET) in subjects with ET dysfunction. METHODS: Sixteen subjects (19 normal ET ears and 6 PET ears) were individually placed in a sound-isolated audiometry booth and subjected to a 1000Hz click train stimulus, played through the nose. PET subjects were identified through the ET clinic at our institution, while healthy subjects were recruited. Transmission through the ET was recorded by a microphone in the ear ipsilateral to the presenting nostril, during no swallow and swallow states, and this was used to compute a power ratio (power in the frequency range of interest to the whole frequency range). The power transmission ratio both before and after the swallow was averaged, and represented the baseline (BaseR). The power transmission ratio during swallow represented the peak (PeakR). The same process was repeated in the absence of a stimulus to account for swallowing noise. Wilcoxon rank rum tests were performed to determine statistical significance. RESULTS: It was found that for healthy ET patients, the median difference between the PeakR and BaseR was 0.51 (p = 0.004). For the PET patients in this study, the median difference between the PeakR and the BaseR was 3.30 (p = 0.041). Comparing the baseline between groups revealed that PET patients had a median BaseR 1.05 higher than healthy ET patients. PET patients had a median PeakR of 3.84 higher than healthy ET patients. Both were deemed to be statistically significant (p = 0.003, p = 0.003 respectively). A significant difference was found between median PeakR for the stimulus and no-stimulus condition for the healthy ET group (0.59, p < 0.001) and for the PET group (4.39, p = 0.031), indicating that it was unlikely that swallowing noise caused false positive results. CONCLUSION: The results of this study suggest that a novel click stimulus is capable of detecting ET opening during swallowing in healthy patients as well as highlighting PET in diseased subjects.