Operative therapy for disturbance of sound conduction

The cause of a conductive hearing loss can be a defect of the eardrum (chro nic otitis mediia, cholesteatoma, trauma), but also a fixation or discontin uity of the ossicular chain (chronic inflammation, trauma, malformation) or a deficiency in the aeration of the middle ear cleft (serous otitis media, adhesions). All these problems are of mechanical origin and can be treated by surgical procedures (reconstruction of the eardrum and the ossicles, ae ration of the ear), which in most cases are successful. In the following th e surgical steps are explained. The prognosis and the surgical procedure of greater malformations of the ear must be discussed individually in every c ase.