Superior Canal Dehiscence: A Comparative Postmortem Multislice Computed Tomography Study

Superior canal dehiscence is defined by missing bony coverage of the superior canal against the middle cranial fossa. The gold standard in diagnosis is high-resolution computed tomography (CT). A false-positive CT scan, identifying a dehiscence when one is not present, could lead to unnecessary surgical therapy. This study aims to compare postmortem CT scans with autopsy findings with regard to superior canal dehiscence.

Postmortem study.

Tertiary referral center.

Twenty-two nontraumatic death cases within a 3-month period (January to March 2017) were included with 44 temporal bones. Each body underwent postmortem head CT prior to medicolegal autopsy. The middle fossa floor was exposed, and if present, the superior semicircular canal dehiscence was identified and measured. In each case, 3 comparable photographs were taken during the autopsy (left temporal bone, right temporal bone, overview).

Autopsy findings revealed bony dehiscences in 11% of the temporal bones, whereas CT scan revealed bony dehiscences in 16%. The length of the dehiscences were longer when measured by CT imaging.

The diagnosis of superior canal dehiscence syndrome requires high-resolution CT with clinical symptoms and physiologic evidence of a third mobile window. Our study underlines a mismatch between multislice CT imaging in the coronal plane and the presence of a dehiscence on autopsy.