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Updated: Dec 9, 2025
Author Spotlight: Advancements in Impedance Monitoring for Cochlear Implant Surgery
Published on: August 4, 2023
Cochlear Implant Infections and Outcomes: Experience From a Single Large Center
Ananth Vijendren1, Amritha Ajith, Daniele Borsetto
1Department of ENT, Addenbrookes' Hospital, Cambridge University Hospital Trust, Cambridge, UK.
Objective:
To review our experience with cochlear implant infections over the past 5 years, the management strategy and to identify predictive factors that led to explantation.
Study Design:
Retrospective record-base case series of cochlear implant infections.
Setting:
Tertiary otology and implant center.
Patients:
All patients who had cochlear implantation over a period of 5 years.
Intervention(S):
None.
Main Outcome Measure(S):
To identify risk factors, rates and outcomes of cochlear implant infections, and to formulate strategies to develop clearer management protocols to prevent cochlear implant explantation.
Results:
Of 704 implanted patients, 22 suffered a postoperative soft tissue infection (3%). Fifty-nine percent of these infected patients resulted in explantation, giving an explantation rate of 1.8% over the whole study population. One hundred percent of the infected implants identified as having either Staph. Aureus or Pseudomonas spp. as the single causative organism resulted in explantation.
Conclusions:
There is a high rate of explantation when infection is detected. Currently there is no clear consensus on medical management, such as choice of antibiotics or length of antibiotic course. A registry of cochlear implants would facilitate standard reporting methods for severity and type of infection, to be able to pool data across centers and form a more robust management protocol for cochlear implant infections.
