The Long-Term Follow Up of Acute Low-Tone Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Abstract

We examined the hearing prognosis and hearing change in 32 ears of 30 patients with acute low-tone sensorineural hearing loss (ALHL) followed up for more than 1 year at the Department of Otolaryngology, Hyogo College of Medicine. The change of hearing loss in patients with ALHL was classified into 9 types by their clinical time courses. Six ears (18.7%) were suffered only once and all of them were cured. The recurrence of hearing loss occurred in 26 ears (81.3%) of 24 patients and 14 ears (43.8%) returned to the normal hearing level at each attack. The overall curative ratio of long-term follow up of ALHL was 62.8%. Five patients (15.8%) later developed Meniere's disease. Because the minimum interval of transition to Meniere's disease was 14 months, Meniere's disease will increase with length of the follow up. Prognosis of ALHL with long-term follow up was considered to be worse than that with short-term follow up reported in the previous studies. This suggested that the long-term follow up is needed to evaluate the clinical time course and prognosis in patients with ALHL.