Intratympanic injection in sudden sensorineural hearing loss

Purpose: the aim of this study was to evaluate intratympanic corticosteroid injection in cases with idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss [SSNHL]

Material and Methods: seventy patients with sudden onset sensorineural hearing loss [SSNHL] were included in this study; 40 females and 30 males. Their age ranged from 14 to 67 years old. The hearing loss was graded into mild, moderate, severe and profound SNHL. The patients were classified into 3 groups according to the treatment modality; Group I did not receive corticosteroid therapy and included 10 patients, group II received systemic corticosteroid therapy and included 15 patients and group III received intratympanic corticosteroid therapy and included 45 patients

Results: in group I, 30% of patients showed improvement and in group 11, 40% of patients showed improvement and in group III, 82% showed improvement of hearing

Conclusion: intratympanic corticosteroid therapy for SSNHL has a better success rate than systemic corticosteroid therapy and control patients with no treatment. It has a low incidence of complications. Patients with mild and moderate hearing loss have a better prognosis than patients with severe and profound hearing loss

Speech and click evoked auditory brainstem response in delayed language children with normal pure tone audiogram

Children with normal auditory thresholds may still suffer from auditory processing disorders, resulting in poor speech understanding. Abnormal electrophysiological responses to speech syllables at the brainstem level have been associated with a wide spectrum of diagnosed learning problems. The aim of this study was to identify the pattern of speech evoked brainstem response in normal peripheral hearing children with delayed language development and to develop an objective method to test those children. The speech and click evoked ABR results of twenty children, their age ranging from 4-6 years [of both genders], complaining from delayed language development with normal pure tone audiogram and normal IQ results were compared to the results obtained from twenty normal children matching in age and gender. There was no significant difference in the wave V latency and amplitude values of click-evoked ABR in normal and delayed language subjects. However, a statistically significant difference between the wave V latency and amplitude values of the speech-evoked ABR in normal versus delayed language subjects was detected. There was also a highly significant difference in the duration and slope of the V-to-A transition between the two groups. Results obtained from this study suggest that speech evoked ABR may be a useful objective tool in the early diagnosis of children with delayed language development. More wide scale studies on speech evoked ABR must be conducted to obtain age related norms, and to assess other abnormalities such as learning disabilities