Erosive Benign Fibro-osseous Lesion of the External Auditory Canal

Abstract

The term fibro-osseous lesion encompasses a spectrum of disorders ranging from inflammatory to neoplastic that microscopically exhibit a connective tissue matrix containing formless trabeculae of compact bone. Characteristically, they are located over healthy bone, from which they are abruptly differentiated. The majority of the lesions arise from the maxillofacial region; the occurrence of a lesion in the external auditory canal (EAC) being extremely rare as is in our case. The lesions present with a range of symptoms ranging from conductive hearing loss, Eustachian tube obstruction to bone erosion that develop due to the mass effect. We report a case of a 35-year-old male patient who presented with insidious onset left aural fullness, decreased hearing followed by intermittent mucopurulent discharge from the ear, who was eventually diagnosed with a benign fibro-osseous lesion of the external auditory canal.