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• The influence of a paper prosthesis on healing in acute traumatic tympanic membrane perforations was studied in 60 patients randomly selected for a treatment group or a control group. The majority (42 [70%]) were seen within two days. All patients were treated with oral antibiotics for ten days. The overall healing rate two months after the trauma was 94% (37 of 39 patients). No significant difference between the study group and the control patients was observed. Intermittent secretion was seen in six patients but did not influence the outcome. The perforations occurred in patients with normally sized mastoid air cell systems as seen on roentgenograms. We conclude that acute traumatic tympanic membrane perforations do not need to be treated routinely with paper patching.(Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg 1987;113:1285-1287)

In Reply.—We regret that our article, which was a summary of recent and unpublished work from our laboratory, did not give the complete information under the "Patients" section that our control group was matched according to physical activity, age, and malnutrition. Therefore, we hereby want to add the information that our patients with and without cancer had lost similar amounts of weight and that the groups had a comparable degree of malnutrition assessed by conventional means, eg, body weight, actual to ideal weight, triceps skinfold, midarm circumference, serum albumin concentration, and total body potassium. However, it may well be that the patients with cancer were slightly more protein malnourished and their conditions were evaluated from lower serum albumin concentrations. The patients with cancer who received enteral nutrition were also essentially comparable with the patients with cancer receiving parenteral nutrition. However, the groups were too small to allow meaningful comparison between the