The goals of chronic ear surgery are first, to obtain a dry, stable, safe ear; second, to repair tympanic membrane defects, and finally, to restore conductive hearing loss caused by chronic otitis media with or without reconstruction of the ossicular chain. With concept for hearing restoration in chronic otitis media, numerous materials have been used for both the tympanic membrane and ossicular reconstruction. This paper deals with the author's experience with the newest of the materials for ossicular reconstruction; namely, ultrahigh weight
polyethylene(Polycel®). In all cases a piece of cartilage was interposed between the prosthesis and the tympanic membrane graft to prevent the potential problem of prosthesis extrusion.
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