The eustachian tube lumen in chronic otitis media.

The measurements of the size of the eustachian tube lumen, in its various regions, in adults are presented. The material consisted of serially sectioned eustachian tubes of 26 normal temporal bones and four pathologic temporal bones, three of them with simple chronic otitis media and one with cholesteatoma. These measurements reveal: (1) in adults (as in children) that there is a considerable variance of the eustachian tube lumen sizes corresponding to other variations in sizes of other organs; (2) no obstruction of the eustachian tube lumen was encountered in any of the pathologic specimens; and (3) there was no significant statistical difference between the lumen size of the eustachian tube retrieved from normal temporal bones compared with those from temporal bones with chronic otitis media.