Evaluation of Patients with Post-Traumatic Hearing Loss: A Retrospective Review of 506 Cases

The purpose of the study is to evaluate the audiological, radiological, and examination findings of patients who have been treated for hearing loss (HL) due to head trauma and evaluated in terms of causality to reveal current data, and to highlight the steps to be taken.

We retrospectively reviewed the reports of cases that had applied for disability with HL due to head injury and had been evaluated by the Forensic Medicine Institute between January 01, 2009 and January 01, 2019.

Of the total cases of head trauma, 52.42% were not vehicle-related, and cases were observed to be concentrated in the age range of 19-40 (55.92%; n = 283). Although otorrhagia/otorrhea was the most common finding in all types of trauma, TM perforation was the most common finding in blast-type injuries. While the rate of newly developed unilateral HL was 84.2%, 72.7% of the patients had sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) . Temporal bone fractures were detected in 59.3% of the cases, and 60.2% of them were of the longitudinal type. Facial paralysis (FP) was detected in 28.6% of the cases, and there was no statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of HL compared to those without FP. Other nerve palsy was detected in 4.9% of the cases, and N. Abducens paralysis was the most common.

Accompanying intracranial nerve injury, temporal fracture, and intracranial pathologies are considerably high in patients who develop HL following head trauma. The first examination requires a multidisciplinary approach to guide future disability applications.