Thirty Years of Otosclerosis Studies

UNDER the influence of the great masters of otology, Wittmaack, Holmgreen, and Sourdille et al, 1 whose opinion we learned to appreciate in personal contact, much of our time has been dedicated to the study of otosclerosis. As early as 1939, 2 one of us (A.S.) published his first experiences with surgical treatment of this disease, which started in 1936 immediately after the International Congress of Otorhinolaryngology in Berlin where otosclerosis was the center of interest. The present publication is a survey of our results published hitherto in German and in French. We were primarily interested in the genesis of the disease but started our investigations with the classification of the pathological processes and statistical data concerning frequency. According to the fundamental studies of Wittmaack, Mayer, 3 and especially of Nager and Meyer 4,5 and Weber, 6 otosclerosis must be considered as a fibrous osteodystrophy localized in the labyrinthine capsule.