Survival of Scarpa's ganglion in the profoundly deaf human

The electrically evoked auditory brain stem response in some cochlear implant patients may be confounded by evoked potentials generated by vestibular neurons. The magnitude of this contribution to the response from the vestibular system is unknown, in part because the survival of cells within Scarpa's ganglion in profoundly deaf humans is unknown. Therefore, we undertook a quantitative study of Scarpa's ganglion in 48 deaf subjects who in life would have been candidates for cochlear implantation and in 5 subjects with normal hearing. The numbers of residual cells in both Scarpa's ganglion and the spiral ganglion in deaf subjects were significantly less than in individuals with normal hearing. Bivariate analysis demonstrated a highly significant positive correlation between cell counts of Scarpa's ganglion and the spiral ganglion. The durations of hearing loss and of profound deafness were negatively correlated with Scarpa's ganglion cell counts. However, in contrast to spiral ganglion cell survival, the cause of profound deafness did not predict the number of Scarpa's ganglion cells. Multiple linear regression analysis using a variety of clinical parameters demonstrated that the best predictor of the number of Scarpa's ganglion cells in profoundly deaf humans was the number of remaining spiral ganglion cells.