Otosclerosis in South Australia

In this paper we report on the prevalence of clinical otosclerosis in South Australia, and discuss some aspects of its distribution and character. Our data comes from an exhaustive search for stapedectomy patients in a relatively closed population within a fixed time span, and hence our figures represent a lower limit for the true prevalence and not an unbiased estimate. Nevertheless, even with no allowance for this downward bias it would seem that South Australia has a high prevalence of otosclerosis by world standards, particularly of obliterative cases. The highest prevalence is about 5 per 1 000 of population for men and 10 per 1 000 of population for women, which occurs in the 50-59 year old age group. In common with many other studies, our data shows a prevalence for females approximately twice that for males, over most age groups.