Prevalence of Temporal Bone Malformations in Prospective Cochlear Implant Candidates.

Severe to profound Sensorineural Hearing Loss is a challenging medical problem, particularly if this condition is associated with an inner ear anomaly. This case series studies the prevalence of inner ear anomalies among 76 consecutive prospective cochlear implant candidates who presented to our tertiary care hospital over 2 years. Inner ear anomalies were identified in 11 cases with a prevalence rate of 14%. Narrow Internal Auditory Canal (IAC) is the most common inner ear anomaly (5) followed by Mondini (3) and Globular vestibule (3). Combined CT and MRI play an important role in the preoperative assessment of inner ear anomalies which may affect not only the decision to perform the Implant procedure and the prognosis but also the choice of implant and surgical technique.

Functional Endoscopic Sinus Surgery Versus Balloon Sinuplasty with Ethmoidectomy: A 2-year Analysis in Pediatric Chronic Rhinosinusitis.

To evaluate the 2-year post-operative outcomes of pediatric patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) treated with balloon catheter sinuplasty (BCS) and ethmoidectomy compared to functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS). Two-group, retrospective cohort study of 28 children with CRS was performed. Of these 28 participants, 15 were treated with traditional FESS (53.6 %) and 13 (46.4 %) underwent traditional ethmoidectomy with balloon sinuplasty. Pre-operative and 2-year postoperative total symptom scores and medications were compared. To examine the potential long-term differences in surgical outcomes and surgical procedure on symptom outcome, one-tailed Chi square analyses were employed. The mean age of the children examined was 9.3 (SD = SD = 4.1; range 3-18) and 61.9 % were male. Pre-operative symptomatology, medication and Lund Mackay scores were evaluated for both groups and no significant differences were identified. Overall, 73.3 % of children that underwent traditional FESS and 76.9 % of those who had BCS with ethmoidectomy reported significant long-term improvement in at least one of their pre-operative sinus complaints. Our data suggests that both BCS with ethmoidectomy and traditional FESS are effective treatment options for uncomplicated CRS and result in long-term alleviation of core sinus complaints, as well as decreased sinus related medication use. Larger prospective studies are needed to further evaluate these procedures.