[Clinical symptomatology and diagnosis of otitis and its complications].

Clinical presentation of children having an otitis media includes earache and fever. Both signs are not found in 20% of cases, while 20% of children with otitis have gastrointestinal disorders. Systematic clinical otoscopy should be performed in each child, because of the lack of value of symptoms for predicting otitis media in children. Clinical otoscopy shows first a red tympanic membrane, then a bulging eardrum, followed by an abscess of the middle ear. Otoscopy interpretation can be difficult in cases of chronic otitis media surinfection or in neonates. Otoscopy can be hard to perform: technical improvements exist, but they cannot be used in the everyday practice at home. The current complication of otitis media are facial palsy (5/1,000) and meningitis (1/1,000) leading to sequellae (deafness).