Long-term hearing results of incus transposition

Incus transposition is an option for reconstructing an ossicular discontinuity. We looked at the long-term outcome (average 9.2 years) in terms of hearing results in patients who had undergone incus transposition. Patients were requested to attend for a pure tone audiogram. Details of their preoperative audiograms were obtained from the patients' case notes. A postoperative air-bone gap of 20 dB or less averaged over four frequencies (0.5, 1, 2, 4 kHz) was considered to be an acceptable result. We found that 70% of patients had an air-bone gap of 20 dB or less and 54% had had cholesteatoma surgery at the time of the incus transposition. This study represents the longest follow-up of patients having undergone incus transposition from our search of the literature. Incus transposition, we feel, offers good long-term hearing results.