I had a tympanoplasty yesterday. Here’s how it went; feel free to ask questions :)

Hi everyone,

I had a tympanoplasty yesterday. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me.

My surgery was around 3 hours and it’s been about 15 hours since. I had about 40% of my ear drum in tact. About half of it was scar tissue. My doctor (who’s also my surgeon) said he’d leave it there. Well, he actually might not have ended up keeping his word.

My Case

I’m 22, female, and have had and still have lots of ear issues. I’ve had dozens of ear infections in both ears, about 7 sets of tubes on my left ear (surgery ear) and about 5 in my right ear. I have PET (patulous Eustachian tube) in both ears and have since I was a kid. I am in the diagnosis phase for SCDS. I have conductive hyperacusis, lots of strange autophony (and even more with this tympanoplasty), and mild-moderate hearing loss.

The surgery

The surgery typically lasts 1-2 hours my surgeon told me. The outer edge of the ear drum hole is cut, skin is taken from behind your ear, and placed on top of the hole. The graft can either be placed on the front side of your ear drum (the part you see when looking into the ear) or from behind the ear drum. It depends what your surgeon thinks is best. My surgeon told me that the graft will stay in place better for me if it’s inserted from behind. So presumably that’s what he did.

My parents tried telling me what the surgeon told them, but they have no clue about the surgery so I don’t know for certain yet if this is true. My surgeon might have removed the scar tissue from my ear drum which could be why the surgery took so long. I’ll update when I talk to him.

If your ear canal is too small, and mine was, the surgeon will cut a vertical line behind your ear and gain access to the ear drum that way. It gives a bigger and clearer view. They close that hole with stitches when it’s done.

There are multiple pieces and different kinds of packing that they put in your ear to keep the graft in place. There is dissolvable packing placed behind your ear drum, in your middle ear. Then there’s packing placed in front of your ear drum all the way to the ear canal opening. Gel foam is the name of the packing touching the ear drum. Merocel is the next type of packing that fills your ear canal. Then a cotton ball is the outermost packing. You change the cotton ball when it gets bloody. The packing needs to be kept moist so it doesn’t stick to the eardrum, so you need to apply drops that’ll be prescribed to you.

Pain

I didn’t feel much of any pain the first 6ish hours after surgery. All I felt was the head wrap digging into my forehead. My ear didn’t really feel numb. It just felt like there was no pain. After 6 hours, the pain started to kick in. There will be pain meds you can take before the pain gets too bad. My nurse said to take the pain meds when my pain reaches a 4 or 5 on the 1-10 pain scale.

So far the pain isn’t too bad. It stays around a 3 or 4 with the meds. The worst part is by far the PET (Patulous Eustachian tube). If it weren’t for that, this recovery would be a breeze.

Symptoms

I do have PET symptoms which are hearing my breathing and voice pretty loudly in my head. I have constant pulsatile tinnitus on the operated ear. It’s not painful, just annoying. I did notice my tinnitus is very quiet and I have fewer tinnitus sounds on the operated ear. Usually my tinnitus is very loud and consists of about 3-6 different sounds. While typing this, I hear no tinnitus on the operated ear.

Since the packing touches the ear drum, anything that touches or moves the packing is VERY loud. This includes touching the packing, touching your face, walking, moving your mouth/ jaw, etc..

You’ll hear popping sounds as the ear starts to absorb the blood, since air would be taking its place. I haven’t heard much of this yet since I’m so early in the healing process.

Your ear will also bleed which is normal. As long as your Cotten ball doesn’t need to be changed more than once an hour, you should be fine, according to my doctor.

Limitations

There are several things you can’t do for a while with this surgery. You can’t really sneeze or cough since that could move the graft. If you have to sneeze and can’t stop it, then sneezing with your mouth open will minimize the pressure build up in your ear and therefore minimize the movement of the graft.

You also can’t strain, which has been really hard for me since I evidentially do that a lot lol. You can fly in an airplane after 2 weeks and can shower after 5 days. There are other limitations too but these are some of the basics.