Micah scores. . . .

I got an email from Micah's ENT surgeon tonight; he had a chance to review the CT already (five hours after it was done) and

Micah's Jahrsdoerfer score was 8/10 ! ! ! ! This is EXCELLENT news.

Micah lost one point for the appearance of his auricles and another for a possibly fibrous incudostapedial joint.

(This is the grading system used to evaluate whether or not the auditory canal atresia can be surgically repaired.)

Cited from http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/993857-treatment :

"Jahrsdoerfer proposed a grading system to predict which patients would potentially have the greatest benefit from surgical intervention for correction of an atretic external auditory canal. In this system, points were assigned for normal structures on the basis of CT scanning. Two points were given for the presence of a stapes, whereas 1 point was assigned for the presence of oval window, middle-ear space, facial nerve, malleus/incus complex, pneumatization of the mastoid, incudostapedial joint, round window, and normal external ear appearance. With a score higher than 8, Jahrsdoerfer achieved a postoperative hearing threshold of less than 20 decibels (dB) in 80% of patients. Furthermore, he concluded that patients with a score of less than 6 would most likely benefit more from nonsurgical management."