Mechatronic design of an office-based ventilation tube applicator for patients with Otitis Media with Effusion

Otitis Media with Effusion (OME) is a very common ear disease affecting both children and adults worldwide. Myringotomy and ventilation tube (grommet) insertion on the eardrum is carried out when medication as a treatment for OME fails. In this paper, the current approaches are revisited and the extensive setup and requirements are simplified to a novel “all-in-one” device allowing office-based grommet insertion in an awake patient with chronic OME. The device consists of mechanical system, sensing system and motion control system, which will be elaborated in the paper along with the working process and prototype. Experiments are carried out on ear model with mock membrane and pig eardrum using the Shah type grommet. The results show a success rate of up to 92% on ear models and around 86% on pig eardrums.