H80.1: Otosclerosis involving oval window, obliterative

Areas of your middle ear and inner ear have changed.

The ear is a sensory organ that is used to hear and to maintain one's balance. There are 3 different areas in the ear: the outer ear, middle ear and inner ear. The middle ear begins behind the eardrum. It consists of the air-filled tympanic cavity and the 3 ossicles. The actual hearing organ, the cochlea, is in the inner ear. The cochlea consists of a channel of bone in a spiral, like a snail. Inside the cochlea are the sensory cells for hearing. The inner ear connects to the brain via the auditory nerve.

In the inner ear there are 2 small openings on the bony section of the cochlea. The openings are covered with a membrane. On the membrane of the opening, the 3rd ossicle is anchored. In this way, there is a connection between the ossicle in the middle ear and the cochlea in the inner ear. In your case, bone tissue has changed in this area. As a result, this connection point has hardened and is less mobile. The changed bone tissue has caused a small opening in the bony part of your cochlea to seal up. The precise cause of this disorder is unknown.

Noise and sounds from the environment reach our ears as sound waves. When the sound waves meet the eardrum, they make it vibrate. These vibrations are transmitted via the ossicles to the cochlea, getting amplified in the process. In the cochlea the sensory cells convert the vibrations to electrical signals. These signals then pass via the auditory nerve to the brain, where they are perceived and processed. When areas in the middle ear and inner ear become hardened, sound waves can be passed on to the cochlea only to a limited extent. One's hearing can be impaired as a result. One may also perceive a noise in one's ear. This is called tinnitus.