Middle Ear Surgery: Pointers and Pitfalls

Careful preoperative selection of patients is one of the most important aspects to avoid complications. First, accurate audiology is essential. Audiological studies can contain inaccuracies as a result of machine, human, or calibration error. The otolaryngologist can use tuning forks judiciously to efficiently check results of the audiology. The 256, 512, and 1024 tuning forks, used in conjunction, can determine the degree of conductive hearing loss. In this way, otolaryngologists can operate on patients who have conductive hearing loss, not nerve hearing loss, which naturally leads to better results.