15 March 2016 â¢ 2:25pm. The death of an American tourist in a horrific lion attack in South Africa in the summer of 2015 was a stark reminder of the dangers that can be posed by wildlife. But while terrifying, attacks by lions on humans are quite rare. Fewer than 100 people are killed by lions each year.
Some of the middle ear structures may be seen through an especially transparent ear drum, while the inner ear may be evaluated only by CT scans, MRI scans or indirectly by special testing, such as audiometry (hearing tests) or other special tests of inner ear function.
With the middle ear acting as an impedance-matching device, a majority of the energy of a sound wave moves on to the inner ear. In the case of a sound that is too loud, muscles attached to the ossicles can tense to decrease the proportion of the sound that is transferred and help to prevent damage to the inner ear. Connecting the middle ear to the throat s a short, narrow passage called the eustachian tube (Figure 1).