·Data of 8 EOM patients (EOM group) were collected. Additionally, 16 cases of chronic suppurative otitis media (CSOM group) and 16 healthy volunteers (control group) matched with age, gender and course of disease were selected for comparison. All participants were monitored by pure-tone test, acoustic impedence, video head impulse test (vHIT), vestibular evoked muscular potential (VEMP), and dynamic posturography (DPG). And then, date of the three groups were analyzed.

·Compared with the control group, there was a statistically significant difference in the composition ratio of the types of hearing loss in the EOM group (P=0.000), while there was no significant difference in the composition ratio between the EOM group and the CSOM group (P=0.892). In vHIT, the gain values of semicircular canals in the EOM group were significantly different from those of the CSOM group (P=0.035), without visible difference from those of the control group (P=0.220). The gain values of upper and posterior semicircular canals in the EOM group were not significantly different from those in both the CSOM group and control group (P=0.807, P=0.971, P=0.683, P=0.610). In cVEMP and oVEMP, the abnormal rate of the EOM group was significantly higher than that of the control group (P=0.002, P=0.033), while being compared with the CSOM group, there was no significant difference (P=0.631, P=0.352). In cVEMP, the incubation periods of P1 and N1 in the EOM group were significantly longer than those in the control group (P=0.000, P=0.000) , and the amplitudes of P1-N1 in the EOM group were lower than those in the control group and CSOM group (P=0.000, P=0.000). In DPG, the composite score (P=0.025), visual score (P=0.017), vestibular score (P=0.040) and visual preference score (P=0.006) of the EOM group were significantly lower than those in the control group. And the composite score of the EOM group was also obviously lower than the CSOM group (P=0.024).

·EOM tends to lead to more severe inner ear neurotoxicity than neutrophil-mediated infective middle ear inflammation. Since vestibular dysfunction has the characteristics of compensatory remission, patients with EOM may not have obvious symptoms of vertigo. Systematic and comprehensive assessment of vestibular function is helpful to reveal functional disability, and then targeted rehabilitation therapy can be carried out.