A retrospective study of psychogenic hearing loss in children

Abstract

Forty-nine ears of 30 children diagnosed as a having psychogenic hearing loss were studied retrospectively. All the patients were under 16 years of age when they visited the Kyushu University Hospital. The follow-up periods ranged from 6 to 92 months after being diagnosed. We only explained to both the patients and to their parents that the disease itself was not organic, but spontaneously curative and that they would likely heal as they grow older without under going any treatment. The rate of improvement in hearing loss on the audiogram was found to be 86%. An interesting finding was that the rate of improvement in the patients who had graduated from junior high school was better (96%) than that in the patients who were still in junior high school (79%). These observations suggest that a psychogenic hearing loss in children is thus considered recover naturally without any treatment as they grow up.