COMPARISON OF SOUND TRANSMISSION CHARACTERISTICS THROUGH RECONSTRUCTED TYPES OF TYMPANOPLASTY USING A FULL-SCALE MODEL EXPERIMENT

Tympanoplasty is surgical operation performed for intractable otitis media which includes chronic otitis media and chronic suppurative otitis media with cholesteatoma and has multiple types depending on the patient’s medical condition. This includes the ossicle reconstruction by inserting reconstruction material to restore hearing. However, there are some cases in which postoperative hearing performance is poor, and no expected knowledge has been obtained. There are some studies on the mechanism of sound transmission through human intact middle ear, but we have not yet obtained enough information on the mechanism of sound transmission through the reconstructed ossicles. In this study, the hypothesis where differences in sound transmission characteristics in wide frequency range occur due to the shapes of the reconstructed model was verified by measuring the displacement of stapes footplate with laser doppler vibrometer in a full-scale model experiment including external auditory canal, tympanic membrane, tympanic cavity, and ossicles.