The role of subtotal petrosectomy in cochlear implant recipients: Our preliminary results

Conventional cochlear implantation (CI) is challenging in patients with coincidental anatomical or inflammatory middle ear pathologies. Performing subtotal petrosectomy (STP) simultaneously with CI allows to effectively overcome aforementioned problems. The aim of this study is to describe the benefits of simultaneous STP for our CI patients, review its indications, and analyze short-term outcomes. We describe five cases of successful CI using STP method, the indications for operation were advanced otosclerosis, vestibular schwannoma, chronic mastoiditis, cholesteatoma and previous implant bed infection. Five patients had a follow-up of 7-16 months. We had minor complications, which did not require medical intervention. We provide analysis of surgical strategy, postoperative complications and auditory performance of those patients. In this study, we found clear advantages of STP for our selected CI candidates. These were better exposure in cases with modified anatomy, radical eradication of the underlying disease and reduction of the secondary infection risk.