Stapes Surgery Training for Resident Doctors

In ear surgery, chronic otitis media or choleateatoma are very important training operations for ear nose and throat (ENT) residents. They are common ear disease and so young doctors can get a standard skill of ear surgery. Stapes surgery is relatively uncommon. It is also important training program for them. Because they can learn normal anatomy of the middle ear and treat ossicular conduction.We have performed questionnaire survey to explore training condition of ear surgery for young ENT doctors. List of questions were sent to the committee members of the Japan Otological Society. Questions were the number of annual stapes surgery and operators, when to start ear surgery training, necessary or disadvantage items for their training, what ear surgery is appropriate for young doctors and so on. More than ninety percent leading doctors answered our survey. This seemed to be the result how important they were thinking ear surgery training was for residents.Total number of ENT doctors has been decreasing and hospital available for ear surgery has been also limited recently. Even in this adverse circumstance, training for residents to learn ear surgery is very important and they should experience hearing improvement of the ear diseased patient after ear surgery. Therefore, anatomically normal operation like stapes surgery can be very useful training course for premature ENT residents.