Preliminary Study on Rapidly Progressive Sensorineural Hearing Loss (Rapid Deafness)

Abstract

There are three types concerning onset of the hearing loss in definition of sudden deafness in foreign countries: a) instant onset, b) awake on awakening in the morning, c) development of deafness over a period of a few hours or days. In Japan, however, it is limited to the cases of a) and b). The cases of c) was tentatatively called by the authors “Rapidly Progressive Sensorineural Hearing Loss”(or Rapid Deafness).
The results of examinations of 9 cases (5 males and 4 females, aged 15-52) whose deafness developed within an hour to 3 days were reported. Their averaged hearing loss in dB at 5 frequencies at initial visit was 53-89 dB and-7-60 dB at fixed stage. The prognosis was complete cure in 5 (3 spontaneous cure), markedly improvod 2, improved and unchanged 1 respectively. Except for the following points, rapid deafness showed no difference from sudden deafness: 1) Speed of progress of hearing loss, 2) Various matters exist in their history except for 2 cases, 3) Number of days from onset to cure was two times longer than in sudden deafness. The authors conclude that rapid deafness should be examined and treated as same as for sudden deafness, but differently diagnosed until collection of a mass of the cases is available.