Some diseases, however, affect the tiny middle ear bones, and need to be corrected by surgery.

Suzanna Potts had been going deaf since her early 20s — due to damage to her stapes or stirrup bone.

"Because it stops vibrating in and out, the soundwaves can't get through to the inner ear and the person has a hearing loss," says Dr Nigel Biggs from St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney.

"I just couldn't hear people clearly and had to ask everyone to repeat things," says Suzanna. For Suzanna, the solution is to replace the bone with an artificial one — highly delicate surgery indeed. "The area we're operating on is about the size of a grain of rice," explains Dr Biggs.

Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital is now using one of the first specialised lasers in Australia for this microscopic ear surgery. The intensely hot and focused beam simply vaporises the damaged tissue and bone, a significant advance on conventional surgery where the bones need to be fractured to remove them.

Operating on one of the smallest bones in the body is not only delicate work, the margin for error is less than half a millimetre and any mistake could wipe out a persons hearing — that's why the accuracy of the laser is so important

Anything that improves our patient safety is a great advantage and it's a big step forward for us in our surgical techniques," says Dr Biggs.

For Suzanna, the results are stunning. "I've been able to hear a lot more been able to talk to a lot more people without asking people to repeat things so it's been a big improvement."

From National Nine News