Ear surgery: results and complications

There are a wide range of ear surgeries described in the veterinary literature, but for the purposes of this lecture, the main two procedures considered will be total ear canal ablation-lateral bulla osteotomy (TECA-LBO) and ventral bulla osteotomy (VBO).

How do we define results?

It’s not always straightforward to work out what is meant by the term ‘results’ in the veterinary literature pertaining to ear surgery. Depending on the study, results might mean the complication rate associated with a surgical procedure, owner satisfaction, patient quality of life after surgery based on veterinary assessment, quality of life based on owner assessment, unilateral versus bilateral surgery, ongoing requirement for veterinary management, improvement in clinical signs, the ability of the surgical procedure to completely treat the condition, or the outcome for neoplastic compared to non-neoplastic disease^1-14. In other words, it’s difficult and potentially quite misleading to compare results between studies, despite the fact that this is what frequently happens.

If we simply look at the numbers, then the veterinary literature gives us the following approximate complication rates for TECA-LBO in dogs and cats^1,2,4-14 . There are fewer reports documenting the procedure in cats, so the percentages are based on smaller numbers. [...]