Abstract: Background: The cochlear implant (CI) is unique among medical devices in that it serves as a neurosensory prosthesis capable of restoring or providing de novo the sense of hearing to its users. Causes of cochlear device explantation are divided primarily into device failures and medical failures.
Study design: Retrospective and prospective analysis.
Objective: determine the causes and the frequency of device and medical failure.
Patients and Methods: The study involve 17 patients who had cochlear explantation from total implantation 766 patients in the department of otolaryngology in AL-Yarmouk teaching hospital during period from April 2008 to March 2018, and the data was collected from operative notes that is documented in patients files.
Results: A total of 766 implants were performed from April 2008 to March 2018, with 17 devices explanted, the implanted devices were 45.8% Cochlear nucleus devices, and 27.5% were MED-EL devices and 26.6%. Where Advance bionics. The overall failure rate was 17 of 766 (2.22%) of which 13 (76.47%)due to medical failures and 4 (23.5%) due to device failures. Patients with cochlear nucleus devices underwent 9 explants (2.56% failure rate) of which 8 (88.9%) was medical failures and 1(11.1%) was device failures. Patients with MED-EL underwent 3 explants (1.42% failure rate), which all of them was due to device failures Patients with advance bionics underwent 5 explants (2.45% failure rate) all of them was medical failure. Medical failures included wound infection with wound breakdown, wound infection with flap necrosis, hematoma, cholesteatoma and biofilm. Device failure include hard failure and soft failure. Over all the average time to explantation was 559days (range, 10-3468 days).
Conclusion: Overall, cochlear explantation rate is low. The medical causes was more common and more with cochlear nucleus device type. the device failure rate was more common with MED-EL device type.
