Abstract
Patients with bilateral acute deafness or acute deafness occurred in an only-hearing ear face the catastrophic consequences. The purpose of this study was to analyze the incidence, etiology of deafness and performance of cochlear implantees who had lost their hearing from acute profound sensorineural hearing loss. We found 13 cases, in which implanted ears had been acutely deafened, among 75 postlingual-deaf adults. The causes of deafness included idiopathic sudden deafness in 4 cases, mumps, meningitis, bromate poisoning in 2 cases respectively and other reasons, such as acute renal failure and head injury.
Postoperative performance on word recognition tests in these cases were generally high compared to the average performance for progressively deafened patients. In particular, 4 cases of idiopathic sudden deafness showed excellent performance regardless of duration of deafness. Our results indicated that retrocochlear function tended to be maintained in ears with acute deafness, regardless of the cause. Some protective mechanisms might exist against spiral ganglion cell death secondary to extensive damages to organ of corti and/or stria vascularis.
