[Nystagmus findings during sudden deafness and their estimation (author's transl)]

Seventy-three of 172 patients with sudden deafness had a vestibular participation. The found forms of spontaneous and provoked nystagmus, their partial combination with thermic under- or non-excitability of the labyrinth as well as vertigo complaints of the patients are described, especially in their temporal course during the illness. The frequent vestibular participation during sudden deafness entitles to introduce the term "range of forms of peripheral-vascular conditioned labyrinthine disturbances", whose cornerstones are the sudden isolated peripheral deafness and the sudden isolated peripheral vestibular loss with a number of intermediate forms. In addition to this, the stronger consideration of the vestibular findings during sudden deafness facilitates the otherwise often difficult differential diagnosis of Menière's syndrome: that one differs by the lacking increase of direction-fixed spontaneous or positional nystagmus to the cochlearly injured ear, incidences of central forms of nystagmus, and the possibility of temporal occurrence of the vestibular findings after the cochlear damage.