Clinical multi-center study on the treatment of sudden sensorineural hearing loss accompanied with feeling of ear fullness / 中华耳鼻咽喉头颈外科杂志

ABSTRACT

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To investigate the therapeutic effect of drug treatment for patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) accompanied with feeling of ear fullness (FEF).</p><p><b>METHODS</b>A prospective clinical multicenter research was carried out from August 2007 to October 2011. SSNHL patients aged between 18 to 65 years old and accepted no medication were recruited, with a duration less than two weeks. The patients were divided into four types according to the hearing curve type A was acute SSNHL in low tone frequencies, type B was acute SSNHL in high tone frequencies, type C was acute SSNHL in all frequencies, and type D was total deafness. Each type was subdivided into two groups by the accompaniment of SEF or not. And each type had four different treatment programs, based on the unified designed randomized table. All patients were followed up for four weeks from the initial examination.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>A total of 1 024 cases with single side SSNHL were recruited in the study from 33 hospitals in China, including 565 cases accompanied with FEF (55.18%), and 459 cases without FEF (44.82%). By classification of audiogram, 205 cases were type A (20.20%), of whom 122 were accompanied with FEF (59.51%); 141 cases belonged to type B (13.77%), of whom 74 were accompanied with FEF (52.48%); 402 cases were type C (39.25%), of whom 229 were accompanied with FEF (56.97%); and 276 cases were classified as type D (26.95%), of whom 140 were accompanied with FEF (50.72%). No significant difference was observed in total effective rate between the SSNHL patients accompanied with FEF or not in four acoustic types (P > 0.05). Among four acoustic types, the clinical cure rate of patients accompanied with FEF in type A was 93.44%, ranking the first; followed by 84.28% for type C; 75.71% for type D; and 70.27% for type B, respectively.</p><p><b>CONCLUSIONS</b>The therapeutic effect for patients accompanied with FEF in type A is satisfactory. The presence of FEF do not impact the therapeutic effect for SSNHL patients.</p>