OBJECTIVE To assess whether free-living and/or biofilm bacteria are present in the putative sterile middle ear cavity before insertion of the electrode array during cochlear implantation. DESIGN Prospective study. SETTING Tertiary academic hospital. PATIENTS The study included 45 healthy children (with or without a history of otitis media) undergoing cochlear implantation. INTERVENTIONS...

Lizards have highly directional ears, owing to strong acoustical coupling of the eardrums and almost perfect sound transmission from the contralateral ear. To investigate the neural processing of this remarkable tympanic directionality, we combined biophysical measurements of eardrum motion in the Tokay gecko with neurophysiological recordings from the auditory nerve. Laser vibrometry shows tha...

The area and volume of the air cell system of fifty normal temporal bones were investigated. The area on a plain X-ray, Sonnenkalb projection, was measured by a planimetric method and a rectangular dimensional method by Imai in 1978. The volumes of the temporal bone air cells on high-resolution CT were calculated separately as partial volumes divided in all CT planes. The sum of the partial vol...

OBJECTIVES To report a second case of cholesterol granuloma of the middle ear invading the cochlea. MATERIAL AND METHODS A 54-year-old woman, who had undergone right-side tympanoplasty with stapedectomy, complained of intermittent right-side otorrhea associated with cophosis. Otomicroscopy found anterior eardrum perforation with mucopurulent effusion. Computed tomography (CT) showed a lesion ...

It was impossible to observe directly the tympanic cavity with the ear drum intact. The superfine fiberscope, developed by the Department of Otolaryngology, Tokyo Medical College, makes it possible to observe the tympanic cavity through the eustachian tube without any surgical intervention such as myringotomy. This fiberscope is flexible and very fine, having an outer diameter of 0.6-0.8mm. Usi...

Conclusion. The development of a histological 3D model of the tympanic cavity visualizes the exact microanatomy of the sound conduction organ and is therefore essential for finite elements simulations and surgical training. Objectives. So far, no accurate histological 3D model of the sound conduction system existed in literature. For 3D reconstruction of the very fine structures inside and outs...

The discomalleolar ligament (Pinto's ligament) is not described in the anatomy textbooks but was demonstrated by Pinto and others. This is a ligamentous structure connecting the malleus in the tympanic cavity and the articular disc and capsule of the temporomandibular joint. This anatomical relationship between the middle ear and the temporomandibular joint is supposed to be one of the explanat...

The position of testudines in vertebrate phylogeny is being re-evaluated. At present, testudine morphological and molecular data conflict when reconstructing phylogenetic relationships. Complicating matters, the ecological niche of stem testudines is ambiguous. To understand how turtles have evolved to hear in different environments, we examined middle ear morphology and scaling in most extant ...