Stapes surgery under local anaesthesia

In the UK, stapes surgery is performed almost universally under general anaesthesia. In 1984 there was consensus that local anaesthesia should be the technique of choice in stapes surgery. Despite reports of successful use of local anaesthesia for middle ear surgery, this is still not widely accepted practice in the UK. We describe the senior author's technique for local anaesthetic stapes surgery and present the hearing results for a series of 100 consecutive cases.