Hearing in young diabetic patients.

Among patients who have sensorineural hearing loss of unknown etiology, diabetes is one of the diseases to be routinely investigated. The purpose of this study was to examine the uncertain relationship between sensorineural hearing loss and diabetes. The authors prospectively studied the pure tone audiometry in 60 diabetic patients, aged less than 40 years and in 60 randomly selected age and sex matched non-diabetic control subjects. The average hearing threshold of the diabetic patients showed a significant elevation than the control subjects although this average threshold in the young diabetic group was still within normal limits. Finally, no consistent association between the average hearing threshold and factors; such as duration of disease, controllable status of diabetes, presence of family history of diabetes or presence of any complication was found to be significant among young diabetic patients.

Cholesterol granuloma coincidence with a large and high jugular bulb: report of a case.

We present a case of right middle ear mass who had an abnormal large jugular foramen, high jugular bulb and large jugular vein on the same side. CT scan could not exclude a glomus tumor. Theoretically, retrograde jugular venography and carotid angiography will give the most useful information. However, in this case we tried to use the MRI scan instead. It showed high signal in T1W, T2W, GRT2W which correlated with blood pigments of methemoglobin in middle ear and mastoid. The low signal in MRI scan T1W, T2W clearly showed enlarged jugular vein, high jugular bulb with diverticulum which helped to excluding a glomus tumor. This finally turned out to be a cholesterol granuloma coincidence with abnormal enlarged jugular foramen and jugular vein. We suggest the MRI scan is very helpful and much safer for patients compared to angiography.

Fungal sinusitis the important role of the histopathology in the clinical management.

Four cases of fungal sinusitis are reported. These include one case of aspergillus sinusitis alone, one case of combined aspergillus and paecilomyces sinusitis, and two cases of mucormycotic (zygomycotic) sinusitis. Although fungal sinusitis appears to be rare, it can pose difficulty in clinical diagnosis and we have demonstrated how the pathologist can help to alert the otolaryngologists of possible fungal sinusitis. Since the histopathological examination is important, a specimen for biopsy is mandatory.