Medical Implications
The round window sometimes fails to develop correctly and causes the hearing loss mentioned above. Unfortunately round window malformations are often associated with other ear malformations and the hearing loss can be much more severe. Some types of ear surgery (now generally abandoned) used to leave the round window open to the outside world and covered over the oval window. Sound pressure therefore hit the round window but was shielded from the oval window. It therefore travelled "backwards" around the cochlea but still gave useful hearing as the hair cells were still deflected in the same way. The round window is often used as an approach for cochlear implant surgery. It has also recently been used as a site to place middle ear implantable hearing aid transducers. This work has been publicised by Prof. Vittorio Colletti in Verona.
Read more about this topic: Round Window
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