Noise exposure when drilling at the round window niche – A temporal bone study

Introduction Enlarging the round window niche by drilling is a routine surgical procedure of cochlear implantation (CI). Bone vibrations induced by drilling, especially near the cochlea, are regarded a great risk for hearing impairment of the patients. In this study we measured drilling induced noise exposure with an acceleration sensor at the patients head. Since it is not possible to place the sensor near the cochlear, a correction strategy has been developed to evaluate the noise exposure when drilling at the round window niche.