Operative Details
Surgery was either total EES, which we classified as our ‘endoscopic’ group, whereby the endoscope was used as the sole instrument for visualisation, or ’microscopic’, whereby the microscope was used for operating with either an endaural or post aural incision. Where the procedure was endoscopic, a 3 mm, 14 cm rigid telescope (Storz®, Tuttlingen, Germany), and a HD 3CCD chip camera (Stryker®, Kalamazoo, USA). Where EES had to be converted to open surgery, this was classified into the microscopic surgery group.