CONGENITAL MALFORMATION OF THE EXTERNAL AND MIDDLE EAR IN THREE PERSONS IN ONE FAMILY

Abstract

With the improvement of the ear surgery, the congenital middle ear malformation, found occas-ionally in the operations, incidence of, have increased making middle ear malformation fairly common.The vast majority of the ear malformation in literature mention no obvious cause, although the etiologic consideration is very difficult to decide in malformation of any part. Logically, however, heredity must be considered to be a strong etiologic posibility.We encountered a rare case of 3 patients with the external and middle ear malformations in one family. They were a man, 39 years old, his daug-hter of 10 and his son of 9, whose bilateral deafn-ess were congenital.The otoscopic examination did not reveal any obvious inflammatory findings in their ears, but the functional examination showed the conductive deafness with the moderate impairment of perce-ptive hearing. Exploratory examinatin of the middle ear cavities of the father and son were carried out and the deformities of the stapes were observed.Stapes mobilization was performed on the father's left ear and stapes surgeries on his son's ears.The former didnot gain as better hearing as the latter.The embryologic considerations of the cases were also discussed.