The Present Status of the Cholesteatoma Problem

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Abstract
Just 120 years ago Johannes Mueller first used the term "cholesteatoma" in the medical literature. Since then innumerable papers have been written on this subject with conflicting, often controversial, opinions. My personal experience over a period of 30 years, enhanced by the considered opinions expressed by distinguished colleagues in search for truth, leads me to the humble conclusion that we have not moved far away from the time of Gruber and von Tröltsch. These careful observers discredited for the first time, in 1862 and 1868, the then prevailing opinion of the pathologists who believed the cholesteatomata to be heteroplastic epidermoid tumors, taking their origin from congenital displaced anlage. It is a well-known fact that even the name cholesteatoma is misleading. The amount of cholesterol in a cholesteatoma is rather negligible and, indeed, much less than is found in simple cerumen. We find, therefore, in the literature many attempts to change

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