Objectives: This study assessed the impact of the location of the chorda tympani nerve (CTN) origin on the round window (RW) accessibility during pediatric cochlear implantation (CI). We also tried to validate the radiologic method to measure the length between the origin of the CTN from the facial nerve to the stylomastoid foramen (CF-SM).
Study design: It was a prospective observational case-series study.
Settings: The included CI surgeries were performed at tertiary referral institutions from November 2018 to August 2021.
Subjects: We included 146 pediatric patients who were candidates for CI.
Intervention: We measured the CF-SM length in the parasagittal cut of the preoperative high-resolution computed tomography. We also classified the intraoperative RW according to the accessibility through the ordinary posterior tympanotomy approach into accessible or inaccessible.
Main outcome measure: We correlated the preoperative radiologic CF-SM length with the intraoperative RW accessibility.
Results: The radiologic CF-SM length ranged from 2.9 to 7.4 mm with a mean of 4.9 ± 1.03 mm. The RW was accessible in 107 patients and inaccessible in 39 patients. Spearman's correlation coefficient revealed a significant relationship between the location of CTN origin and the RW accessibility as the p value was less than 0.0001.
Conclusions: We found a precise method to measure the CF-SM length in the parasagittal cut of the high-resolution computed tomography. We also found a significant impact of the location of the CTN origin on intraoperative RW accessibility. The radiologic CF-SM length of more than 5.4 mm had a powerful prediction capability of the RW inaccessibility.
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