A systematic review of patient-reported outcome measures for chronic suppurative otitis media

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this review was to systematically appraise the world literature to identify existing patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) for the assessment of outcomes in patients with chronic suppurative otitis media, to verify the diversity of the individual questionnaire items, to report the methods employed to evaluate the questionnaires, and to identify areas for development in the future.

Data sources: Embase (January 1980-November 2014), MEDLINE (January 1946-November 2014), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (January 1981-November 2014), and PsycINFO (January 1806-November 2014).

Review methods: A systematic literature search was independently undertaken by the two authors according to predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Results: Nine original articles were identified, which overall outlined the evaluation of four different questionnaires.

Conclusions: This systematic appraisal of the world literature has identified four PROM questionnaires for use in patients with chronic suppurative otitis media. All four questionnaires evaluate reliability and validity using different psychometric methods. The Chronic Ear Survey questionnaire has been most broadly evaluated and disseminated. All four questionnaires assess static health status. There are many advantages to developing a dynamic one-hit questionnaire to assess the health status of patients having undergone an intervention for chronic suppurative otitis media.

Level of evidence: NA Laryngoscope, 126:1458-1463, 2016.

Keywords: Chronic suppurative otitis media; measure development; otology; patient-reported outcome; quality of life; questionnaire.