The National Temporal Bone, Hearing, and Balance Pathology Resource Registry

S. N. Merchant, H. F. Schuknecht, S. D. Rauch, M. J. McKenna, J. C. Adams, R. Wudarsky and J. B. Nadol Jr
Department of Otology and Laryngology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.

The National Temporal Bone, Hearing, and Balance Pathology Resource Registry has been established with funding provided by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health. The registry is meant to serve as a national resource for researchers and the public to stimulate and facilitate human otopathologic research. It will maintain a computerized database of currently active and inactive temporal bone and auditory brain-stem collections throughout the United States. In addition, it will encourage human temporal bone research by disseminating pertinent information, developing and fostering temporal bone professional educational activities, implementing a national temporal bone acquisition network, and encouraging investigative collaborations in the study of the human temporal bone and brain structures. It will also identify otopathologic collections at risk of being discarded or lost and will develop mechanisms and strategies to conserve them.