[Peripheral-type acute cochleovestibular involvement in the Klippel-Feil syndrome. Comments on 2 clinical cases]

The authors present the clinical observations performed on two medium aged patients with a Klippel-Feil syndrome met with during 1980-1987, in the polyclinic and the hospital. The patients presented themselves to the doctor with acute vestibular suffering of a peripheric type, constantly accompanied by bilateral, symmetric loss of hearing, in various degrees, and, sometimes, associated with neurological signs and some laboratory modifications. The cochleovestibular phenomena made themselves conspicuous together with acute cervical arthritic attacks. If following the treatment with cerebral vasodilator, sympatholytic, analgetic, antiphlogistic, antiemetic and neurotrophic medication the vestibular syndrome was easily compensated and the acute arthritic phenomena improved, the loss of hearing as well as other clinical elements of the syndrome persisted. Concerning these two clinical cases there are presented a series of physiopathologic considerations linked to the importance of the vertebral-basilar periarterial sympathetic system in regulating the dynamics and the biochemistry of the labyrinth liquids. We consider as interesting the presentation of these cases, as being so rare in the ORL practice.