Hearing Preservation After Intervention in Vestibular Schwannoma

Objective This study aimed to assess the durability of audiological outcomes after radiation and surgery in the management of vestibular schwannoma. Study Design Retrospective review. Setting Tertiary academic center. Patients Adults with sporadic vestibular schwannoma and serviceable hearing at the time of intervention. Interventions Gamma Knife, middle cranial fossa, or retrosigmoid approaches. Main Outcome Measures Pure-tone audiometry and speech discrimination scores. Results Postintervention serviceable hearing (class A/B) was preserved in 70.4% (n = 130; mean follow-up, 3.31 yr; range, 0–15.25 yr). Of the 49 patients treated with radiation, 19 (39.6%) had serviceable hearing at last follow-up, compared with 38 (46.9% of 81) who underwent retrosigmoid (n = 36 [44.4%]) and middle cranial fossa (n = 45 [55.6%]) approaches (odds ratio [OR], 1.40; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.67–2.82; p = 0.47). A matched analysis by age, tumor volume, and preintervention hearing (n = 38) also found no difference in hearing preservation (HP) likelihood between surgery and radiation (OR, 2.33; 95% CI, 0.24–35.91; p = 0.59). After initial HP, 4 (9.5%) surgical versus 10 (37.0%) radiated patients subsequently lost residual serviceable (A/B) hearing (OR, 0.18; 95% CI, 0.06–0.69; p = 0.01) at a mean 3.74 ± 3.58 and 4.73 ± 3.83 years after surgery and radiation, respectively. Overall, 5- and 10-year HP rates (A/B) after initially successful HP surgery were 84.4 and 63.0%, respectively. However, survival estimates declined to 48.9% at 5 years and 32.7% at 10 years when patients with immediate postoperative serviceable hearing loss were also included, which were comparable to radiation-HP rates at 5 and 10 years of 28.0 and 14.2%, respectively ( p = 0.75). Conclusions After vestibular schwannoma intervention, overall HP was similar between radiated and surgical cohorts. However, when successful, surgical approaches offered more durable hearing outcomes at long-term follow-up.