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Isolated Congenital Middle Ear Malformations: Comparison of Preoperative 0.1-mm Ultra-High-Resolution CT and
Jingying Guo1, Ning Xu2, Ruowei Tang2
1From the Department of Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery (J.G., Y.L., S.G.), Beijing Friendship Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.
Background And Purpose:
Isolated congenital middle ear malformation (CMEM) contributes significantly to congenital hearing loss and growth problems. This study aims to compare 0.1-mm isotropic ultra-high-resolution CT (U-HRCT) and conventional high-resolution CT (HRCT) for assessing isolated CMEM, using surgical exploration as the standard.
Materials And Methods:
This single-center retrospective study included patients with surgically confirmed isolated CMEM who underwent U-HRCT or HRCT from January 2015 to April 2025. Middle ear abnormalities were identified based on operative outcomes and 4 subtypes were classified via the Teunissen standard. Two neuroradiologists blinded to surgical outcomes reviewed CT images for 10 subtle structural abnormalities and specific subtypes. The comparison of U-HRCT and HRCT in terms of interobserver and intraobserver agreement and detection of structural abnormalities and subtypes of CMEM were analyzed.
Results:
The U-HRCT and HRCT groups included 61 patients (69 ears) and 37 patients (44 ears), respectively. U-HRCT exhibited significantly higher interobserver and intraobserver agreement and stronger concordance with surgical findings for all 10 abnormalities compared with HRCT. It also showed superior diagnostic sensitivity for CMEM (100.0% versus 90.9%; P = .013) and outperformed HRCT in differentiating clinical subtypes (0.774 versus 0.352; P<.001). U-HRCT achieved accuracies exceeding 0.85 in identifying all abnormalities and outperformed HRCT in detecting specific abnormalities including abnormal long process of the incus, lenticular process, abnormal stapes superstructure, stapes footplate fixation, and oval window atresia (P < .05).
Conclusions:
Isotropic 0.1-mm U-HRCT significantly outperforms conventional HRCT in diagnosing CMEM, differencing subtypes, and detecting subtle abnormalities, supporting its clinical superiority for precise preoperative evaluation.
