Stapes surgery in residency: the UFPR clinical hospital experience

Surgery of the stapedius remains the established treatment for otosclerosis. Recent publications have showed that success in surgeries done by residents have decreased and hearing results are worse than those obtained by experienced otologic surgeons.

To evaluate the experience of the otorhinolaryngology unit, Parana University, relative to stapes surgery done in the residency training program.

A retrospective study of 114 stapes surgeries done in the past 9 years in 96 patients. Audiometric results were analysed according to the Committee on Hearing and Equilibrium guidelines and the Amsterdam Hearing Evaluation Plots. The improvement of the airway postoperative gap and thresholds were taken into account.

96 patients were included, most of them female adults (67.7%) and white (93.7%). Stapedectomy was done in 50.9% of cases, mostly under local anesthesia and sedation (96.5%), using mostly the Teflon prosthesis (37.7%). The surgical success rate was 50.88%, there was an 11.4% complication rate.

Postoperative hearing gains considered as surgical success were inferior to published results in the literature, done by experienced surgeons.