What is the success rate of surgery resolving or helping?
Good timing Kandi! I’ve been looking at a couple of research articles I’d not seen before, and found two which mentioned the failure rate for ES surgery is 20%. The authors state that they believe these cases fail because either the styloid process is not shortened enough (what we’ve been saying on here all along!!), or because of fibrous tissue. I’m not sure if they mean fibrous tissue as in scar tissue forming post-surgery, or whether it’s already formed because of the inflammation etc. an elongated SP has already caused before surgery, or maybe it’s a bit of both! It does say ‘partial relief of symptoms’- but I think that most of us on here would feel it’s worth having the surgery even for partial relief!
This article mentions the surgery failure rate, plus also the authors state ‘Styloidectomy is the treatment for the relieve of symptoms in this condition.’
That’s a great find Jules!
I’ve been on the forum for about 4 1/2 years and the majority of surgeries that I’ve read about and talked to people about have been successful in getting rid of most symptoms. Sometimes people have to have revision surgeries to take out more of the styloid, but people usually still say they were better off after their first surgery than they were before.