Surgical Audiometry
Early in the renaissance of stapes mobilization surgery, I began to make audiometric observations in the operating room. Analysis of these observations revealed the possibility of using surgical audiometry as an intrinsic guide and valuable physiologic tool during such surgery. From this viewpoint emerged the concept of stapes mobilization "monitored" by surgical audiometry.Our current technique involves the use of the Fletcher formula for arriving at a single average threshold number (a single "figure of merit"). It includes the plotting of a "nomographic chart" with a "predictive guide line," and it provides a "built-in control" which alerts the surgeon to surgical physiologic errors such as incudostapedial discontinuity, inadvertent vestibular fenestra, and crural fractures.
Evaluation of Results
It is especially appropriate at this conference that attention be directed to methods for evaluating results, not only in stapes surgery but in tympanoplasty and fenestration as well.Members of the conference