Failures with Plasti-Pore ossicular replacement prostheses.

Plasti-Pore ossicular prosthesis failures found in our series of 246 patients with regular follow-up are reported and analyzed. Extrusions as well as poor functional results (postoperative air-bone gap greater than 25 dB) of the prostheses with and without cartilage on top have been reviewed. The overall extrusion rate was 9.3%: a higher extrusion rate occurred with prostheses without cartilage (18.4%) than with cartilage (4.4%). Thirty-six patients among those with poor postoperative hearing improvement have undergone revision surgery: the main causes of failure were a short prosthesis, a fixed stapes or footplate, adhesions of the prosthesis to surrounding structures, and the displacement of the prosthesis.