Intraoperative Imaging Blog

Your eardrum is a thin membrane that transmits sound to your inner ear. When the eardrum is perforated, doctors often suggest waiting for a period of time to see if the condition will heal on its own.

If the tear does not heal, tympanoplasty (eardrum repair) is often suggested. Tympanoplasty is effective between 85 and 90 percent of the time.

There are, however, a number of possible complications that patients experience after undergoing tympanoplasty.

Recurring Tears

The process of tympanoplasty involves grafting skin onto the eardrum to repair the tear. One possible risk of tympanoplasty is that the grafted skin will not heal, which makes the eardrum weak and more likely to tear again. This is more likely in patients who have a history of not healing from wounds. Readmore…

Hearing loss, vertigo (a form of dizziness) facial weakness, otorrhea (discharge from outer ear) and ear pains or aches can all be signs of ear infection or disease that merit a visit to a physician.

In most cases, if hearing loss is or exceeds 30 decibels, the physician will suggest tympanoplast a surgery “performed to control infection through eradication of disease and to reconstruct the sound conducting mechanism,” according to the Baylor College of Medicine. Whether it is left or right tympanoplasty depends on the location of the disease.

Types
Horst Wullstein developed five types of tympanoplasty depending on the severity of the infection.

Type I is called myringoplasty, or an operation to close a hole in the eardrum using a tissue graft.

Type II is for perforations in the eardrum with erosion of the malleus, or so-called hammer bone, in the middle ear, and “involves grafting on to the incus [anvil bone] or the remains of the malleus,” according to the Baylor College of Medicine.

Type III is the grafting of tissue on the stapes, or innermost middle-ear bone, to repair “destruction to the lateral ossicles [small middle-ear bones].”

Type VI is used “for ossicular destruction including destruction of all or part of the stapes arch” by grafting tissue “onto or around the mobile stapes footplate.”

Type V is fixing the stapes footplate completely.

Stages

Most surgeons prefer to stage surgery, meaning performing the necessary operations, in separate, smaller steps. Tympanoplasty has two stages: the elimination of disease and aeration, or oxygenation, of the middle-ear cleft, and the reconstruction of the sound pressure transfer mechanism. Readmore…