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The human ear is an intricate mechanism full of delicate moving parts, which makes it a fiddly thing to fix if something goes wrong. Chronic middle ear disease can lead to infection, pain, hearing loss and perforated eardrums, and patients may need several rounds of surgery to address the problems. Now an Australian team of researchers has developed the ClearDrum, a silk implant that can repair a damaged eardrum with just one procedure.
Currently, the standard procedure for repairing eardrums is a delicate affair. Grafts are made from a patient's own tissue, and then attached to the sensitive membrane through some very precise surgery. Even then, it often requires the patient to come back a few times for additional procedures.
But the ClearDrum could change that. Eight years in development, the implant is made of silk, is about the size of a contact lens and, as its name suggests, it's transparent. On the other hand, maybe the ClearDrum gets its name from the improvements it makes to a patient's hearing, since it can apparently transmit sound even better than the real thing.
They can rebuild us. They have the technology.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 31 2017, @05:38PM (4 children)
Probably much better to have a working eardrum than a cochlear implant.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2017, @06:02PM (2 children)
You can't always get what you want.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday May 31 2017, @07:09PM
And this is all well, because you usually want the good stuff and the good stuff is usually immoral, illegal or fattening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Some call me Tim on Wednesday May 31 2017, @09:58PM
But if you try sometimes...well you just might find, you get what you need!
Questioning science is how you do science!
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 31 2017, @09:10PM
I don't think the two are related. Eardrums heal on their own. I had a perforated eardrum once, around 15 years ago I think, caused by jumping in some water badly. It healed on its own in a few weeks; I probably had to make sure to keep water out of it though, and I couldn't go swimming. From my reading on Wikipedia, sometimes they don't heal that quickly, especially if the damage is worse than the small tear I had, so that's why this artificial membrane would be used. But even now, you can just let it heal naturally in most cases, it just takes a while and you have to be careful with it and keep water out.
It's not like you're permanently deaf when you have eardrum damage; far from it.