This article is only available in the PDF format. Download the PDF to view the article, as well as its associated figures and tables.
Dr. Howard House, in his beautiful presentation on the unfavorable results of stapes mobilization, brought out the importance of endolymphatic hydrops as a complication; that certainly has been our experience. It is a very important complication every time the labyrinth is opened either for fenestration or for stapes mobilization.
I would like to mention an interesting observation that we have made on several revisions of stapes mobilizations. When the footplate was cracked, a large amount of perilymph welled up in the oval window niche—far more than I have ever seen in an initial mobilization—suggesting that these patients had an increased amount of intralabyrinthine fluid, apparently perilymph. Possibly the term "labyrinthine hydrops" would be more appropriate for these postoperative cases than "endolymphatic hydrops," because both the perilymph and endolymph may be increased in amount. It would be interestng to know if others have made the same observation.
There is a close