[Some reasons for failure in tympanoplasty (author's transl)]

The reasons for failures in tympanoplasty are classified and discussed as anatomical or pathological ones and those, that rise from method and technique. A main cause insists in the pathopolymorphism of the chronic purulent otitis media and the discrepancy of clinical impression and pathological reality. The author wishes to encourage the surgeons to a more radical technique by these examples and to the use of new methods in the field of reconstructive surgery of the middle ear.