Background: Petrosal cholesteatoma is difficult to be diagnosed before operation. MRI-DWI can make the diagnosis more objective and accurate.Objective: Analysis of incidences and clinical characteristics of petrosal cholesteatoma, and the value of MRI-DWI in this disease.Materials and methods: The clinical manifestations, such as gender, hearing loss, vertigo, tinnitus, hemifacial spasm, facial paralysis, diplopia and ear leakage, and some images, such as CT and MRI of 81 patients with petrosal cholesteatoma were collected and analyzed retrospectively. And the Sanna classification of all the cases were also been analyzed.Results: There were 76 cases of hearing loss. There were 16 patients with vertigo; 12 of headache; 23 of tinnitus; 7 of hemifacial spasm; 54 of facial paralysis; 44 of homolateral ear leakage. There were 57 cases of type Supralabyrinthine, 8 of type Infralabyrinthine, 5 of type Apical, 6 of type Infralabytinthine-apical and 5 of type Massive. There were 2 cases of inconsistency between admission diagnosis and discharge diagnosis.Conclusions: The clinical manifestations of petrosal cholesteatoma are various, and sometimes it is difficult to differentiate it from other petrosal lesions. The combining with MRI-DWI and CT examination is necessary and has an advantage.
Keywords: DWI sequence; Petrosal cholesteatoma; clinical characteristics; magnetic resonance imaging.