Noritaka Komune

and 19 more

Abstract: Objective: Sacrificing the auricle has severe postoperative impacts on patients with temporal bone malignancy who have undergone en bloc temporal bone resection. The auricular complications following en bloc temporal bone resection remain unclear. Therefore, this study aimed to examine auricular complications following en bloc temporal bone resection and reveal the associated risk factors. Study Design: Case series with chart review. Setting: Single tertiary care medical center Participants: Our study includes all cases who underwent en bloc temporal bone resection with preserved auricle for temporal bone malignancy from January 1993 to July 2020. The resulting dataset contained 64 patients during the review period. Main outcome measures: We examined the relationship of auricular complications with surgical procedures and patient profiles. Results: Three of 64 cases (4.7%) showed postoperative auricular complication. The cause in all three cases was venous congestion. Postoperative bloodletting to relieve the congestion effectively salvaged the auricle in two of these cases. Insufficient bloodletting to relieve the auricular congestion in the remaining case led to auricular necrosis. Pre-/infra-auricular lymph node dissection is correlated with auricular complications with statistical significance. Conclusions: Temporal bone resection causes auricular congestion due to vascular insufficiency, particularly insufficient venous outflow. An immediate and continuous application of bloodletting can improve venous drainage after temporal bone resection to prevent auricle necrosis.