Treatments for hearing loss in osteogenesis imperfecta: a systematic review and meta-analysis on their efficacy

About 70% of people with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) experience hearing loss. There is no cure for OI, and therapies to ameliorate hearing loss rely on conventional treatments for auditory impairments in the general population. The success rate of these treatments in the OI population with poor collagenous tissues is still unclear. Here, we conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis on the efficacy of treatments addressing hearing loss in OI. This study conforms to the reporting standards of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA). Data sources include published articles in Medline via PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Embase, from their inception to November 2020. Studies included individuals with OI undergoing a hearing loss treatment, having pre- and postoperative objective assessment of hearing function at a specified follow-up length. Our search identified 1144 articles, of which 67 were reviewed at full-text screening. A random-effects meta-analysis was conducted on the selected articles (n = 12) of people with OI that underwent stapes surgery. Success was assessed as the proportion of ears with a postoperative Air-Bone Gap (ABG) ≤ 10 dB. A systematic review was conducted on the remaining articles (n = 13) reporting on other treatments. No meta-analysis was conducted on the latter due to the low number of articles on the topic and the nature of single case studies. The meta-analysis shows that stapes surgeries have a low success rate of 59.08 (95% CI 45.87 to 71.66) in the OI population. The systematic review revealed that cochlear implants, bone-anchored hearing aids, and other implantable hearing aids proved to be feasible, although challenging, in the OI population, with only 2 unsuccessful cases among the 16 reviewed single cases. This analysis of published data on OI shows poor clinical outcomes for the procedures addressing hearing loss. Further studies on hearing loss treatments for OI people are needed. Notably, the mechanisms of hearing loss in OI need to be determined to develop successful and possibly non-invasive treatment strategies.