Pérez Riffo Marcos; Lindner Cristian & Olave Enrique

Tympanic dehiscence or Huschke's Foramen is considered a minor, hypostosic, non-stochastic, transitory morphological cranial feature, located in the tympanic plate of the temporal bone, whose expression is considered physiological up to 5 years of age. The mention of this feature in the literature is scarce, generating controversy among the anatomists who have described it. The eponymous Huschke, a German anatomist, who has been mentioned as the first to observe it in 1844. However, there is a history that this bone characteristic was previously described by other authors almost 200 years earlier. The current name, tympanic dehiscence, was given in 1878 by Bürkner, being accepted until today. The objective of this article is to carry out a historical analysis of the morphological description of tympanic dehiscence in specialized anatomical literature.

KEY WORDS: History of Medicine; Anatomy; Skull; Temporal bone; Ear canal.

PÉREZ RIFFO, M.; LINDNER, C. & OLAVE, E. Tympanic Dehiscence (Huschke's Foramen): more than 300 years after its first description. Int. J. Morphol., 39(2):527-532, 2021.