Cholesteatoma is a serious form of chronic otitis media. The aim of this paper is to present the state of the art of disease management, including recent data from the literature and the authors' derived from their Mentors' teaching, Professor Pierre Roulleau (Paris, France) and Professor Robert Charachon (Grenoble, France). The main recent advances concern the use of cartilage grafts to reconstruct the canal wall and/or tympanic membrane (allowing a significant reduction in residual cholesteatoma) and progress in medical imaging allowing more acute preoperative determination of extension of the cholesteatoma (in order to propose an optimally designed surgical technique) and a less invasive postoperative follow-up.