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Advanced Biomaterial Restores Hearing

The Health Report, Lake Forest Hospital
Volume 10, Number 6, Nov/Dec 1992
LF, a Libertyville mother of two, has been near deaf in her right ear for as long as she can remember. As a child she laughed off comments like, "Are you deaf?" and "Open your ears!"

Thanks to a remarkable biomaterial - and to Dr. William Gatti, a Lake Forest Hospital ear specialist - she now has close to perfect hearing Dr. Gatti explains this biomaterial - known as Hydroxylapatite - is made up of the same substances as living bone tissue.


The Diagnosis

LF made the decision to seek medical attention the night she was cheering for her son at a basketball game and continually had to turn her left ear to hear a friend who was sitting on her right.

LF found Dr. Gatti through Lake Forest Hospital's Physician Referral Service and explained to him that her hearing problem had gotten progressively worse over the past year; in addition, she was experiencing ringing in the ears. Dr. Gatti performed a complete ear examination and found a white mass behind the eardrum. A hearing test revealed her right ear to be near total deafness.

LF was diagnosed as having a conductive hearing loss, meaning sound waves were traveling to her eardrum but not getting to the nerve, which she and Dr. Gatti attribute to complicated childhood ear infections.

Dr. Gatti assured her that the condition was surgically correctable and recommended she first undergo a CT scan of her middle ear. The scan suggested a growth that had thinned out two of the three layers of the eardrum, and, according to Dr. Gatti, would continue to "destroy anything including bone-in its path" if not surgically removed. 		In LF's case the incus bone of the ossicular chain was eroded, accounting for her hearing loss.

The Operation

LF was admitted to LFH for a tympanoplasty - surgical reconstruction of the eardrum - and reconstruction of the ossicular chain to improve

Using a microscope, Dr. Gatti began by lifting the eardrum, "just like you'd peel open an envelope." He made the ear canal incisions and found a cholesteatoma - or benign cyst-filling approximately one-half of the middle ear.

After total removal of the cyst in the middle ear, Dr. Gatti began reconstructing the ossicular chain using a prosthesis of the advanced biomaterial. Not knowing what he would need, LFH made available all of the latest prostheses, which Dr. Gatti says "saved the operation ... and Frykholm's hearing." He spent over two hours on this "tricky operation" tailoring the device to her middle ear - replacing the missing incus bone with it and repairing the eardrum with a tissue graft.

According to Dr. Gatti, the biggest advantage of the biomaterial implant-which has undergone over 15 years of research in plastic and orthopedic surgery-is that it assumes bone-like characteristics and actually bonds to other tissue. This newest application for middle ear reconstruction allows greater stability and has an excellent success rate.

LF agrees: "Immediately upon surgery, I was healed." She no longer had to compensate for her hearing loss. To celebrate, her husband called her from another phone in their house and she eagerly answered with her right ear.

      Reprinted from The Health Report, Lake Forest Hospital, Vol.10, No.6, Nov./Dec., 1992

     E.N.T. Consultants of Lake County, Ltd.
     William M. Gatti, M.D.
      755 S. Milwaukee Avenue, Suite #181
     Libertyville, IL  60048
     (847) 816-1228