Comment on: quality of life in patients with chronic otitis media

Authors

Letter to the Editor:We read with great interest the recently published paper by Ozler and Akoğlu entitled “Quality of Life in Patients with Chronic Otitis Media”.¹ We’d like to congratulate authors and thank for sharing their experiences with us. There are disease-specific tests and generic tests for assessing the quality of life. In this paper, the authors reported that they investigated the quality of life by using the SF-36 instead of the specific tests. We accept the usage of SF-36 test in this study positively, as it allows a comparison with the work done on other chronic disease (Hypertension, diabetes mellitus etc).^2,3
However, there are also some missing points in the study . Although it is mentioned at the materials and methods section that the correlation was investigated, there is no data or findings related with correlation analysis at the results and discussion section. Additionally, investigation of the correlation between disease duration and quality of life scores will add value to the study. At the results part, it is expressed that there are 19 married and 26 single people in the patient group, 20 married and 24 single people in the control group. Although at result part the hearing levels of 17 patients are expressed as moderate to severe there in no such a classification in ASHA guide. This data has to be checked again and deficiencies must be completed. In the study, quality of life scores of patients with hearing loss were lower and the change in quality of life scores are not affected with the increase of hearing loss degree. But this issue has not been mentioned enough in the article. Likewise, among patients with chronic otitis media presence of ear discharge and tinnitus does not make any change in the quality of life in all areas of the SF-36 except emotional role difficulties. Also, evaluation of these findings with other studies in the discussion part will add value to the study.
We celebrate Ozler and Akoğlu for their valuable article.

References

1. Ozler GS, Akoglu E. Quality of life in patients with chronic otitis media. J Ann Eur Med. 2014;2(2):1-4.
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2. Currie CJ, Poole CD, Woehl A, et al. The health-related utility and health-related quality of life of hospital-treated subjects with type 1 or type 2 diabetes with particular reference to differing severity of peripheral neuropathy. Diabetologia. 2006;49(10):2272-2280. doi:10.1007/s00125-006-0380-7
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3. Trevisol DJ, Moreira LB, Kerkhoff A, Fuchs SC, Fuchs FD. Health-related quality of life and hypertension: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies. Hypertension. 2011;29(2):179-188. doi:10.1097/hjh.0b013e328340d76f
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About This Article

Received:

September 16, 2014

Accepted:

September 16, 2014

Published Online:

September 19, 2014

Printed:

September 19, 2014