Titanium versus non-titanium prostheses in ossiculoplasty: a meta-analysis.

CONCLUSION The papers collected in our study demonstrated that there were no significant differences in the effectiveness of sound transmission and stability of the prosthesis between the titanium and non-titanium group. However, further randomized controlled trials with large sample sizes are needed to improve the estimation. OBJECTIVE To compare the effectiveness of sound transmission and stability of the prostheses in the titanium or non-titanium ossiculoplasty groups by meta-analysis for clinical implications and applications. METHODS Previous studies comparing the hearing status of patients with titanium and non-titanium prostheses were reviewed on PubMed, accompanied by a manual search of all the related references. The eligibility of the investigation was independently confirmed by two reviewers, who extracted all the data from the papers included accordingly for the standard meta-analysis. RESULTS The study included 12 eligible investigations covering 1388 patients, with the pooled risk ratio (RR) estimating the effectiveness of the postoperational prostheses between the titanium and non-titanium group, with a combined RR of 1.12 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.98-1.27, p = 0.09), as well as their stability, with a combined RR of 1.47 (95% CI: 0.76-2.84, p = 0.26).