It is my opinion that every patient considered for operative intervention for relief of chronic draining ear should be considered a candidate for some form of tympanoplasty, depending, of course, on the amount of conductive hearing loss and cochlear potential. This is a report of 100 temporal bone procedures performed since 1951 for chronic draining ear in which attempt was made to salvage useful hearing from various types of residual destruction of the tympanum and its contents resulting from acute necrotic otitis media and from destruction due to so-called primary cholesteatoma. Some 65 other mastoidectomies performed during this same period either did not fit into the category of tympanoplasty or sufficient information was not available for satisfactory evaluation in this series.
It is not implied that tympanoplasty should be accomplished at the expense of failure to eradicate foci of infection or to jeopardize the patient's health with future complications but