Ear canal reconstruction hearing reconstruction

  Congenital external auditory canal stenosis/atresia often occurs together with auricular malformation and ear reconstruction, ear malformation, and mostly manifests as conductive deafness: 1. For bilateral patients, poor hearing often affects the child’s development, resulting in slow response and slurred speech; 2. For unilateral patients, poor ability to localize sound sources, often relying on turning the head position to find the sound source, inconvenience in life, and limited choice of work type. At the same time, most patients with ear reconstruction have psychological stress and even psychological disorders due to the deformity of their appearance. Therefore, these patients have a need to improve both their hearing and their appearance. External auditory canal reconstruction involves both hearing and appearance improvement, and can be done separately, but is often done at the same time as tympanoplasty and tympanic chamber exploration, when reconstructing the external auditory canal is a preliminary procedure to tympanoplasty and exploration, and is the access to the tympanic chamber. In terms of auditory physiology, the external auditory canal itself has a gain of about 11-12 dB to sound. At the same time, the reconstructed ear canal facilitates the postoperative fitting of air-conduction hearing aids, which is more effective than bone-conduction hearing aids that are only applied to the mastoid surface; on the other hand, the reconstructed ear canal (mainly the lateral segment) can improve the appearance and reduce the patient’s psychological stress/obstacle due to the deformity. In recent years, hearing improvement can also be achieved by implanting a bone-anchored hearing aid (BAHA) in the mastoid without reconstructing the external auditory canal. However, because of its relatively high cost, exposed pegs, and susceptibility to infection, it is unlikely to become a popular surgical procedure, and external canal reconstruction, which simulates the physiological condition, is still the conventional procedure.  However, external auditory canal reconstruction is a difficult problem in otology (worldwide) that has not been solved, and the main problems currently exist are: 1. The incidence of re-stenosis or atresia of the reconstructed external auditory canal varies from 8% to 83.3%.  2. A small amount of fluid (infection) or shedding of epithelium accumulates in the reconstructed external ear canal for a long time, which prevents patients from wearing hearing aids and from entering water in the ear canal, resulting in limited swimming and showering or the need to go to the hospital regularly for cleaning.  3. The reconstructed tympanic membrane is displaced laterally, i.e. the ear canal becomes shallow.  4.There is a tendency of hearing loss in the distant future.