Prevalence of Infectious Complications after Cochlear Implantation Surgery among Iranian Children; Report from a Tertiary Hospital

Cochlear implantation (CI) surgery is a choice treatment of bilateral profound hearing loss. The most common infectious complications are meningitis, otitis media, surgical site infection and mastoiditis. The aim of current study is to show the prevalence of infectious complications after CI surgery. In this cross-sectional study, all of the profoundly deaf patients who underwent CI surgery during two years from March 2015 to July 2017 entered to the study and were followed up for 6 months after surgery. All of the complications and documents were recorded in a pre-designed checklist. Finally, 364 Patients were enrolled to the study. The mean(± SD) duration of surgery was 2.3±1.5 hours. The complications after surgery occurred in 30 (8.2%) cases. The most common complication after CI surgery was otitis media followed by surgical site infection, meningitis, and mastoiditis. We found that otitis media is the most prevalent infectious complication after CI surgery. This study showed a significant increase in incidence of otitis media in 4 to 5 year-old children in comparison with other age groups.