Objective: To review a single institution experience with pediatric stapedotomy for juvenile otosclerosis (JO), congenital stapes footplate fixation (CSFF), or tympanosclerosis.
Study design: Retrospective chart review.
Setting: Tertiary referral center.
Patients: Pediatric patients undergoing surgery for stapes fixation from 2001 to 2017.
Main outcome measures: Hearing result based on preoperative, first postoperative, and final postoperative pure-tone average air-bone gap (PTA-ABG). Age, sex, diagnosis, procedure performed, prosthesis, and ossicular anomalies were considered.
Results: A total of 59 children (4-16 years of age) underwent surgery for stapes fixation (67 ears), with an average postoperative audiogram out to 2.88 years. Final postoperative ABG for tympanosclerosis (30.4 dB ± 10.9 dB) showed some improvement but the outcome was significantly worse than in CSFF (21.0 dB ± 11.4 dB) (p = 0.020) and JO (22.8 dB ± 14.9 dB).
Conclusion: Our data suggest, that in our clinic, surgery for stapes fixation is safe to perform in children. While we achieved desirable results for JO and CSFF, patients with tympanosclerosis showed a statistically worse hearing outcome. Tympanosclerosis deserves special consideration and may be better served with a malleovestibulopexy, total ossicular replacement prosthesis (TORP), or amplification in lieu of traditional stapes surgery.