International Journal of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery | January 2020 | Vol 6 | Issue 1 Page 207 International Journal of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery Swain SK et al. Int J Otorhinolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2020 Jan;6(1):207-212 http://www.ijorl.com pISSN 2454-5929 | eISSN 2454-5937 Review Article Transnasal endoscopic eustachian tube balloon dilation: a review Santosh Kumar Swain*, Alok Das, Satyabrata Acharya, Jatindra Nath Mohanty INTRODUCTION Eustachian tube (ET) dysfunction is a common clinical entity, found in at least 1% of the adult. 1 ET dysfunction can cause impaired quality of life because of feeling of fullness in the ear, otalgia and intolerance to air travel or scuba diving. It can also lead to hearing loss and formation of cholesteatoma. ET dysfunction is a common problem among children and often persists in adulthood. ET dysfunction to hearing loss affects the patients in daily activity. Feeling of blocking in the ear or slight hearing loss provides discomfort independent of the etiologies of these disorders. The etiology for ET dysfunction are allergy, infections, laryngopharyngeal reflux, primary mucosal disease, defective dilatational mechanism and anatomical obstruction of the eustachian tube. 2,3 ET dysfunction can lead to different otological manifestations such as serous otitis media and chronic otitis media. 4 The treatment of ET dysfunction is often difficult and the dilation of the lumen of ET provides modest improvement functions of the ET and improves tympanogram. Recently transnasal balloon dilation of the ET is emerged as a useful technique in the treatment of the eustachian tube dysfunction. This review article reviews details of this current novel treatment such as transnasal endoscopic balloon dilation of eustachian tube in chronic eustachian tube dysfunctions including its history, anatomical and physiological considerations, indications, pre-operative evaluation, surgical technique, drawbacks and complications of this technique. METHODS For searching the published article, an electronic search of the SCOPUS, Medline and PubMed databases was conducted. The search term in the database included eustachian tube, balloon dilation and endoscopic approach. The abstracts of the published articles are collected by this search method and other articles were identified manually from the citations. This review article reviews transnasal endoscopic balloon dilation of eustachian tube. This review article discusses about ABSTRACT Eustachian tube (ET) dysfunction is a common clinical entity which often provides challenges to Otorhinolaryngologists. Patients with ET dysfunction typically present with fullness in the ear, hearing loss or plugging in the ear, which impair quality of the life. It can lead to cholesteatoma formation and severe morbidity in the life. There are limited treatment options for ET dysfunction in clinical practice. Presently transnasal endoscopic balloon dilation of ET is a promising treatment for its dysfunction. This technique causes inflation of a balloon in the cartilaginous portion of the ET which leads to local dilation. This procedure helps in reduction of the clinical symptoms and reduces the severity of the ET dysfunction such as hearing loss and cholesteatoma formation. This review article will discuss the effectiveness of transnasal endoscopic balloon dilatation of eustachian tube for treatment of chronic eustachian tube dysfunction. Keywords: Transnasal, Endoscopic, Eustachian tube, Balloon dilation Department of Otorhinolaryngology, IMS and SUM Hospital, Siksha “O” Anusandhan University , Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India Received: 12 September 2019 Accepted: 08 November 2019 *Correspondence: Dr. Santosh Kumar Swain, E-mail: santoshvoltaire@yahoo.co.in Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/issn.2454-5929.ijohns20195716