Diseases of the middle ear in childhood.

Middle ear diseases in childhood play an important role in daily ENT practice due to their high incidence. Some of these like acute otitis media or otitis media with effusion have been studied extensively within the last decades. In this article, we present a selection of important childhood middle ear diseases and discuss the actual literature concerning their treatment, management of complications and outcome. Another main topic of this paper deals with the possibilities of surgical hearing rehabilitation in childhood. The bone-anchored hearing aid BAHA(®) and the active partially implantable device Vibrant Soundbridge(®) could successfully be applied for children. In this manuscript, we discuss the actual literature concerning clinical outcomes of these implantable hearing aids.