An unusual 'disappearing mass' in the ear canal.A 48-year-old man presented with an infrequent feeling that his right ear was blocked. Otoscopy identified what appeared to be a well-defined, skin-covered, 4-mm mass arising from the anteroinferior aspect of the external auditory meatus. The rest of the ear canal and the tympanic membrane were normal. The interesting aspect of this case is that the apparent mass would disappear whenever the patient opened his jaw (figure). Essentially, the patient had a cartilaginous cartilaginous /car·ti·lag·i·nous/ (kahr?ti-laj´i-nus) consisting of or of the nature of cartilage. car·ti·lag·i·nous adj. 1. Chondral. 2. dehiscence dehiscence /de·his·cence/ (de-his´ins) a splitting open. wound dehiscence separation of the layers of a surgical wound. de·his·cence n. of his anterior meatal wall with loose overlying overlying suffocation of piglets by the sow. The piglets may be weak from illness or malnutrition, the sow may be clumsy or ill, the pen may be inadequate in size or poorly designed so that piglets cannot escape. skin, which popped in and out with mandibular movement. The temporomandibular joint was normal. Because the patient was otherwise asymptomatic, no treatment was necessary. [FIGURE OMITTED] Eu Chin Ho, MRCS MRCS Member of Royal College of Surgeons. MRCS abbr. Member of the Royal College of Surgeons , DOHNS; Naeem Siddiqui, DLO, FRCS FRCS Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. FRCS abbr. Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (ORL-HNS) From the Department of Otolaryngology, Warwick Hospital, Warwick, U.K. (Dr. Ho), and the Department of Otolaryngology, Barnsley District General Hospital, Barnsley, U.K. (Dr. Siddiqui). |
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