Kang, Woo Seok1; Chung, Jong Woo1; Park, Jung-Hoon2,3; Song, Ho-Young2
1 Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Seoul, South Korea;
2 Departments of Radiology and Research Institute of Radiology, Seoul, South Korea;
3 Biomedical Engineering Research Center, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea.
The external ear canal is usually curved, sometimes tortuous. It is sometimes difficult to apply the endoscopic ear surgery to the curved ear canal. Also, the endoscopic view is frequently stained by the hair and cerumen of the ear canal resulting in frequent wiping of the endoscope. In this study, we developed a self-retainer system to make the ear canal straight and clean from the hair and cerumen. The self-retainer comprised of two parts: a straight self-expanding metallic stent (SEMS) part for the ear canal and a nitinol flared part for the pinna. The straight SEMS part was knitted from a 0.110-mm nitinol wire into a tubular configuration. When fully expanded, the straight SEMS part was 10 mm in diameter and 12 mm in length. The nitinol flared part was designed to be in direct contact with the pinna. It was a flared mesh made from a 0.110-mm nitinol wire (diameter, 40 mm) and the diameter of the straight SEMS part gradually increased and is connected to the straight SEMS part. The self-retainer was fully covered with a silicon membrane using the dip coating method.
The endoscopic surgery with the self-retainer will be presented.
This study was supported by a grant (2019-7044) from the Asan Institute for Life Sciences, Asan Medical Center, Seoul, Korea.