A Study of Prognostic Factors in Sudden Hearing Loss

Abstract

Weinvestigatedthe prognostic significance ofthe presence or absence ofvertigo and tinnitus, the timing ofthe initiation oftreatment, the type andseverity ofhearing loss, and age in 72 patients who had experienced sudden hearing loss. We found that the factors associated with a positive prognosis were the absenc e ofvertigo, the presence oftinnitus, initiation oftreatm ent within 7days, agreater degree ofhearing loss in the low frequencies, and a hearing loss ofless than 45 dB. Age had no effect on prognosis.

Feasibility of three-dimensional fluid-attenuated inversion recovery magnetic resonance imaging as a prognostic factor in patients with sudden hearing loss

“…For age, it has been argued that older people are more likely to show poor prognosis [2,4,11,14], but there was also a report that age was not related to prognosis [15]. In this study, the final pure-tone average tended to increase as the age increased, but this was not significant.…”

A comparison between the feeling of ear fullness and tinnitus in acute sensorineural hearing loss

“…This suggests that the presence of FEF, unlike TIN, is a good prognostic sign of hearing. The difference in results for TIN between the current study and those by Danino et al (1984) and Mamak et al (2005) may be attributed to the different methodologies used for evaluating patients' symptoms. On the other hand, we could not find any previous reports of FEF as a prognostic sign.…”

Neuromagnetic index of hemispheric asymmetry predicting long-term outcome in sudden hearing loss

“…2A) might argue for a weak association which probably would not survive rigorous corrections for multiple comparisons. It is noteworthy that although efforts have been made to correlate various variables with the prognosis, no single biomarker was yet found to reliably prognosticate the eventual outcome and/or hearing level in ISSNHL at such a significant level of correlation as in the present study (Fetterman et al, 1996;Harada, 1996;Hirano et al, 1999;Mamak et al, 2005). The difficulty in prognostication probably reflected diverse etiologies of ISSNHL.…”

“…2) in ISSNHL. Averaged audiograms at the first and last measurement in ISSNHL with a depiction of the averaged audiogram in controls as a reference revealed a flat-to-descending type of hearing loss in our patients (Mamak et al, 2005) (Fig. 3).…”

“…pure tone average) according to final audiograms was exploited to split patients into three prognostic subgroups: complete recovery, partial recovery, and no recovery. Hearing improvement was conventionally defined as: (1) a threshold of ≦25 dB HL in the affected ear (complete recovery), or (2) a threshold of >25 dB HL with a gain of >10 dB HL in the affected ear (partial recovery) (Mamak et al, 2005;Ochi et al, 2003).…”