sentences:  Two common treatments are stapedectomy, the surgical removal of the stapes and replacement with an artificial prosthesis, and stapedotomy, the creation of a small hole in the base of the stapes followed by the insertion of an artificial prosthesis into that hole.Surgery may be complicated by a persistent stapedial artery, fibrosis-related damage to the base of the bone, or obliterative otosclerosis, resulting in obliteration of the base.The stapes is commonly described as having been discovered by the professor Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia in 1546 at the University of Naples, although this remains the nature of some controversy, as Ingrassia's description was published posthumously in his 1603 anatomical commentary '.