Middle Ear Packing Materials: the Advances in Research and Application

WU Linrong; LI Huan; LUO Lin; ZHENG Zhoushu; WANG Kai; SHEN Yi

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1672-2922.2018.03.028

Abstract：The principle of middle ear surgery is to completely remove the lesion in the middle ear cavity and re-construct an effective acoustic structure. It is clear that a variety of factors can influence the postoperative outcomes, in-cluding the selection and use of middle ear packing materials. The main functions of a middle ear packing material is to support the middle ear acoustic structure including the ossicles and tympanic membrane grafts postoperatively, to main-tain the middle ear cavity with pneumonization, and to promote posto,perative hemostasis. Although middle ear packing materials have been used for over 70 years, some materials have been reported to be associated with adverse reactions such as adhesions, fibrosis and neo-osteogenesis in the middle ear cavity, thereby resulting in ossicular chain fixation and postoperative hearing impairment. Hence, there still lacks an ideal middle ear packing material at present, and the uniform standard of packing material selection and utilization remains unclear as well. With recent development in mod-ern medicine and material science, novel packing materials have been introduced with good postoperative outcomes. Moreover, recent studies demonstrate that middle ear surgery without middle ear packing can promote postoperative hearing rehabilitation at early stages. This article will summarize the clinical application of various types of middle ear packing materials as well as current research results.