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External auditory canal
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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The external ear canal (meatus acusticus externus), open from the outside, ends blindly in the interior, separating from the middle ear cavity by the tympanic membrane. The length of the ear canal in an adult is an average of 35 mm, the diameter reaches 9 mm at the beginning and 6 mm in the narrowest place, where the cartilaginous external auditory canal passes into the bone. The cartilaginous external auditory meatus, which is a continuation of the auricle, has the form of a groove open upward, and is 1/5 the length of the entire ear canal. Two-thirds of the external auditory meatus have bone walls belonging to the temporal bone.
The auditory canal is S-shaped, predominantly in the horizontal plane. To straighten it, when examining the tympanic membrane, the auricle should be pulled backward and upward. The auditory meatus is lined with skin, which, thinner, continues on the eardrum. In the skin covering the cartilaginous part of the ear canal, a lot of sebaceous and a special kind of glandula ceruminosae (sulfuric glands), producing earwax.
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