The Emerging Role of Hearing Loss Rehabilitation in Patients With Vestibular Schwannoma Treated With Gamma Knife Radiosurgery: Literature Review
Neurosurgical Review
Morselli, C., Boari, N., et al. (2021).
Neurosurgical Review, 44(1), 223-238.
This systemtic review investigates cochlear implant outcomes in individuals with vestibular schwannomas who have undergone stereotactic radiosurgery treatment.
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Case reports; case series
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For adults with sporadic or neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2) vestibular schwannoma (VS) who experience hearing loss after Gamma Knife stereotactic radiosurgery (GK-SRS), studies investigating the effects of cochlear implantation (CI) reported promising audiological and quality of life results. At an average post-CI follow-up time of 24.42 months, 56.8% of patients demonstrated audiological improvements, 36.4% were unchanged, and 6.8% showed deterioration across the included studies. Characteristics of patients who showed no improvement included more severe NF2 phenotype, a long history of ipsilateral profound deafness before CI, progressive tumor growth post-SRS, and high radiation treatment dosage. While there is very limited research on sporadic VS patients, initial studies found that these CI patients demonstrated good hearing restoration and improved QoL. Timing of CI post GK-SRS varied across studies. The impact of radiological imaging follow-up required for adults with VS was noted as a possible complication for CI. Additional research on CI for sporadic and NF2 VS patients is needed.
