Otosclerosis is a primary disease of the temporal bone that typically presents with conductive hearing loss. Stapes surgery, the treatment of choice, is a safe but technically demanding procedure that can be associated with some ‘anomalies’, namely floating footplate which can lead to sensorineural hearing loss and vestibular symptoms. This requires the surgeon to carefully adopt an approach in order to achieve good results and prevent possible sequelae. A 40-year-old female patient was referred to the ENT specialist for unilateral progressive hearing loss. After evaluation, the patient was scheduled for exploratory tympanotomy, which confirmed the presence of stapes fixation, and stapedotomy was performed. During this procedure, a floating footplate was observed. The Teflon prosthesis was placed over the footplate, with good functional results. However, given the instability of the support site, one year after the surgery the prosthesis was displaced, requiring revision surgery, which was performed with adequate audiometric success.
Lourenço et al. (Thu,) studied this question.