Gellé experiment

The Gellé experiment tests the mobility of the ossicular chain and can be helpful in otosclerosis diagnosis. The test is named after the French ear specialist Marie Ernest Gellé (1834–1923), who described it in 1881.

A vibrating tuning fork is placed on the skull, and a Politzerballoon is placed on the ear canal . The compression of the Politzer balloon creates an overpressure that stiffens the sound conduction chain. The normally functioning middle ear, as well as middle ear processes with a movable stapes footplate, are hindered by the overpressure in both bone conduction and air conduction , the sound of the tuning fork becomes significantly quieter for the person examined (Gellé positive). With stapes fixation, on the other hand, only the air conduction is preexisting, while the bone conduction shows an unchanged hearing threshold even in the Gellé experiment ; the tuning fork tone remains the same for the examined despite the pressure increase in the auditory canal.

Pointing the way for the diagnosis of stapes fixation or otosclerosis is the consistent result with and without overpressure in the external auditory canal in the bone conduction.

The experiment is not suitable for differentiating between cochlear and retrocochlear hearing disorders.

For further tuning fork tests see also: Bing test , Rinne test , Weber test .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Harald Feldmann: The historical development of hearing test methods: brief description and bibliography from the beginnings to the present . Thieme, Stuttgart 1960.
2. ↑ Hans-Georg Boenninghaus : Ear, nose and throat medicine for students of medicine . 10th edition. Springer, Berlin a. a. 1996, ISBN 3-540-60396-4 , pp. 46 .

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