This article reviews the importance of the round-window membrane in exposing the labyrinth to or protecting it from the toxic effects of otitis media. Characteristics of the immune system in the human middle ear and middle-ear mechanisms against bacteria are explained. The role of bacteria and bacterial products in inner-ear damage is detailed, and related pathological events are described. The...

Piston-stapedotomy is the most common method for hearing restoration in patients with otosclerosis. In this study, we have experimentally examined a prototype of a new chamber stapes prosthesis. The prototype was implanted in a human cadaver temporal bone. The round window vibrations before and after implantation were measured for the acoustic signal (90 dB SPL, 0.8-8 kHz) in the external audit...

Nineteen adults and 9 children who received a unilateral cochlear implant between 2002 and 2007 were included in the study. All subjects were preoperatively diagnosed with significant residual hearing in low frequencies, termed as 'partial deafness', and were implanted according to a 6-step round window surgical technique for partial deafness cochlear implantation. Hearing was preserved to a gr...

Controlled-release carriers for local drug delivery have attracted increasing attention for inner-ear treatment recently. In this paper, flower-shaped bovine serum albumin (FBSA) particles were prepared by a modified desolvation method followed by glutaraldehyde or heat denaturation. The size of the FBSA particles varied from 10 μm to 100 μm, and most were 50-80 μm. Heat-denatured FBSA particle...

Sensorineural hearing loss is the most common type of hearing loss worldwide, yet the underlying cause is typically unknown because the inner ear cannot be biopsied today without destroying hearing, and intracochlear cells have not been imaged with resolution sufficient to establish diagnosis. Intracochlear imaging has been technologically challenging because of the cochlea's small size and enc...

We conducted a retrospective study to evaluate the long-term effectiveness of gentamicin applied directly to the round window membrane via the Silverstein MicroWick system in patients with definite or probable Ménière's disease. The study population was made up of 69 patients who had received 3 drops of gentamicin 10 mg/ml three times daily; the duration of treatment was guided by objective dat...