MINI REVIEW article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Neuro-Otology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1598789
Clinical Trials in Otology and Neurotology: State of the Science
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Otolaryngology, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, United States
- 2Department of Neurosurgery, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States
- 3Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States
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Objective: To evaluate the current state of interventional clinical trials in otology and neurotology.Study Design/Methods: Review of registered clinical trials on ClinicalTrials.gov from January 1st 2019 through May 31st 2025. Interventional trials and those that met keyword criteria for otologic/neurotologic disorders were included. For each study, key characteristics including trial status, trial phase, study design, participants, intervention type, funding source, and results status were collected.Setting: National databaseResults: Though the number of interventional otologic and neurotologic clinical trials has grown over the past fifteen years, in the past five years, there has been a stagnation of the steady growth seen in the preceding ten. The greatest proportion of trials were focused on hearing loss, utilized devices, were randomized, and were funded by sources other than industry or the government. Compared to 2008-2018, trends included a shift towards device and procedural interventions for vestibular disorders and a decrease in device trials and increase in behavioral interventions for tinnitus. Emerging areas include novel pharmacological and gene therapies for hearing loss and vestibular schwannoma, but these areas remain gaps and are promising therapeutic avenues that merit further exploration.Conclusion: Future interval assessments exploring the trends in otologic and neurotologic clinical trials should be performed to identify gaps that offer opportunities for innovation of novel therapies and to monitor the health of the clinical trial environment.
Keywords: Otology, Neurotology, clinical trials, Hearing Loss, translational therapies
Received: 24 Mar 2025; Accepted: 27 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Moore, Sagi and Stankovic. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Konstantina M Stankovic, Department of Otolaryngology, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.