Vol.95 No.10 contentsPRACTICA OTO-RHINO-LARYNGOLOGICA
Vol. 95 No. 10 October 2002
Acute Low-tone Sensorineural Hearing Loss
Yoshiharu Kitani, Hideyuki Fukushima, Hajime Nakamura,
Yoshihiro Tamura, Tetsuya Tamura and Katsura Kawata
(Kitano Hospital)
We retrospectively studied 131 patients (132 ears) with acute low-tone sensorineural hearing loss (ALHL) who were treated at our facility from April, 1997 through March, 2001. Their illnesses were characterized by 1) acute onset, 2) with chief complaints of ear fullness, tinnitus and hearing impairment, 3) without vertigo, and 4) hearing loss in the two lower frequencies (250 Hz and 500 Hz). We investigated the general clinical features, the audiometric diagnostic criteria in the two lower frequencies and the effectiveness of steroid therapy in the improvement of prognosis and recurrence ratio.
The results were as follows;
1) Patients consisted of 40 males (40 ears) and 91 females (92 ears). The female-male ratio was 2.3. The peak incidence was in their thirties for males and twenties and fifties for females.
2) About 95％ of patients in the study registered at more than 50 dB in the two lower frequencies.
3) The hearing recovery rate was 79.8％ (87/109).
4) The recurrence ratio was 24.8％ (27/109). Of 21 patients followed up, 14 recovered, 1 not changed and 6 were diagnosed with Meniere's disease.
5) There were no differences in hearing recovery ratio and recurrence ratio between patients with and without steroid therapy.
Key words : acute low-tone sensorineural hearing loss, the audiometric diagnostic criteria, steroid therapy, prognosis, recurrent ratio