A particularly gratifying part of my practice is seeing children with hearing loss and seeing children with a specific type of congenital ear disease where the ear canal failed to develop. We call that congenital oral atresia. What I do is to open the ear canal, build an ear drum, find the ear bones, and liberate the ear bones so that they can vibrate freely in the air and then put a skin graft in that ear canal to restore the sound-conducting mechanism of the middle ear. These children are born with a moderate to severe hearing loss, and after surgery, many times I can bring their hearing into the normal range. It's extremely gratifying, and patients from all over the country, even all over the world, will send me their CAT scans and send me their hearing tests, and even many come to the University of Virginia for me to do this operation. It's a real privilege to be able to take care of these children, and it, again, is extremely gratifying that, when I take the packing out one week after surgery, the child hears for the first time. It is a very powerful and moving experience. There are tears in the parents' eyes. There are tears in my eyes. It really is a powerful experience to be able to give the gift of hearing to children born without an ear canal.