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Updated: Jun 9, 2026
Neuro-rehabilitation Approach for Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss
Published on: January 25, 2016
A comparison of the short-term outcome in patients with acute low-tone sensorineural hearing loss
Shinya Morita1, Masanobu Suzuki, Keiji Iizuka
1Department of Otolaryngology, Kushiro City General Hospital, Kushiro, Japan. shinyamorita@yahoo.co.jp
Purpose Of The Study:
We aimed to compare the short-term outcome of patients with acute low-tone sensorineural hearing loss (ALHL) treated with steroid alone, diuretics alone or combination treatment.
Procedures:
Between April 2000 and March 2009, we retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 156 patients with a diagnosis of ALHL. All patients were followed up until improvement or for 8 weeks from the initial examination. Patients were treated with steroid alone (n = 49), diuretics alone (n = 40), combination treatment (n = 46) or they received neither steroid nor diuretics (n = 21).
Results:
The steroid-diuretic combination therapy for ALHL showed significantly better results than the steroid or diuretic treatments alone (p < 0.05). There were no clinically significant differences in the outcome between the steroid- and diuretic-alone treatments.
Conclusion And Message:
The etiology of ALHL is described as both an endolymphatic hydrops and an autoimmunological mechanism so that, as expected, the steroid-diuretic combination therapy was more effective than the steroid or diuretic treatments alone.
