Background: Eustachian tube dysfunction can cause middle ear diseases and impair quality of life. Sufficient diagnostic tools for chronic obstructive eustachian tube dysfunction are lacking and not reliable enough.
Patients and methods: The Eustachian Tube Dysfunction Questionnaire (ETDQ-7) was published by McCoul et al. in 2012 as an instrument to evaluate eustachian tube function. They demonstrated the reliability und validity of their questionnaire. The cut-off point for the diagnosis of eustachian tube dysfunction is ≥ 14.5 at 100 % sensitivity and 100 % specificity. We translated the ETDQ-7 into German and used it on 100 healthy subjects and 43 patients with chronic obstructive eustachian tube dysfunction.
Results: The results in the English questionnaire were confirmed by our examinations with the German version of the questionnaire. The mean ETDQ-7 score was 8.67 in the healthy subjects and 24.7 in the patients with chronic obstructive eustachian tube dysfunction. The area under the curve in ROC analysis was 98.8 % (p < 0.0001).
Conclusion: We recommend the ETDQ-7 as an addition to patient history in the examination of eustachian tube dysfunction. It may as well be valuable in follow-up examinations to monitor treatment success.