Clinical and radiological evaluation of patients with skull base osteomyelitis and evaluation of disease prognosis at adult hospital of hacettepe university, Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine, Department of otorhinolaryngology

Skull base osteomyelitis is a rare disease with a high mortality and morbidity rate. Disease often manifests deep and continuous headache with severe and pulsatile character, otalgia and unilateral ear discharge in patients. A total of 32 patients with a diagnosis of the skull base osteomyelitis were included in our study. According to gender distribution, 27 patients were male (84.4%) and 5 patients were female (15.6%). Our study aimed to determine disease spread at the first diagnosis of skull base osteomyelitis patients and to predict the prognosis of the disease with a new clinical staging system based on the new MRI grading system and the evaluation of this grading with cranial nerve dysfunction status has been developed. When the relation between the initial magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) grade and the hospitalization times of the patients was compared, it was found hospitalization times increase when the MRI grade was increased and this was statistically significant (p = 0.022). As the MRI grades of our patients increased, the recovery rates at discharge decreased and the progressive disease and death cases were observed more frequent (p =0.039). When the duration of hospitalization with the clinical stages of the patients were evaluated together, it was seen that as the clinical stage increased, the hospitalization times increased (p = 0,047) and the recovery rates at discharge diminished (p = 0,029). Based on these results, it is understood that MRI grading and clinical staging systems for SBO are appropriate evaluation methods for disease follow-up and prognosis estimation. Anahtar kelimeler: Kafa tabanı, Osteomyelit, Magnetik rezonans görüntüleme, Cerrahi, Mastoidektomi