OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS Ventilation of the chronically inflamed middle ear is a key outcome in functional middle ear surgery. Grommets eliminate middle ear effusion, but there is also evidence that they downregulate inflammation. The reason for this is not understood, but there is little to suggest alteration in eustachian tube ventilatory capacity. Previous work has shown that the Junbo mouse mo...

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 ...

For questions concerning ON-LINE CEs, call (866) 261-3558. Childhood ear infections consist of acute otitis media (AOM), otitis media with effusion (OME), and otitis externa (OE). AOM and OME have been defined in a clinical practice guideline developed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and American Academy of Family Physicians. In order to have a diagnosis of AOM, the patient must hav...

This work describes the design and optimization of three prototypes of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) capacitive accelerometer-based middle ear microphone. The microphone is intended for middle ear hearing aids as well as future fully implantable cochlear prosthesis. The analysis is done using COMSOL Multiphysics. The maximum applied acceleration was considered 1g. Human temporal bones a...

Middle ear barotrauma is one of the common complications of SCUBA diving representing acute otalgia, hearing loss, and bleeding. But occurrence of facial palsy is rare. Here we report a case of a 30-year-old navy diver suffered middle ear barotrauma with transient facial palsy after SCUBA diving. He felt difficulty in equalizing the pressure in middle ear with Valsalva maneuver during diving, a...

Pneumococcal otitis media is associated with the production of potent inflammatory mediators (leukotrienes), but the mechanism by which pneumococcus induces production of leukotrienes in the middle ear is poorly understood. In this study, up-regulation of 2 genes that govern the lipoxygenase pathway, cPLA2 and 5-LOX, was observed in rats following inoculation of pneumococcus into the middle ear...

The Eustachian tube (ET) is a narrow canal that courses from the middle ear cavity to the nasopharynx, which opens to provide ventilation to the middle ear and to equalize middle ear and ambient pressures (1). In this article, we refer by “Eustachian tube dysfunction” only to obstructive ET dysfunction, i.e., failure to open and ventilate the middle ear, as opposed to patulous ET dysfunction, i...

BACKGROUND Total ossicular replacement prostheses (TORP) are often used to re-establish ossicular coupling of sound in an ear lacking a stapes supra-structure. The use of TORPs, however, is associated with a 2/3 five year failure rate due to their anatomic instability over time in the middle ear. The use of autologous fat to try and stabilize TORPs may improve long-term results with this challe...

otitis media with effusion (ome) is one of the most common causes of hearing loss (hl) in children. it has been reported that several factors such as eustachian tube dysfunction, insufficiencies in the aeration of the mastoid cells, allergies, immunity, and infections play an important role in the etiology of the disease. little is known about the role of helicobacter pylori (h. pylori) in extr...