[Current and retrospective problems of treatment of occupational hearing loss of the cochlear type]

The prevalence of occupational hearing impairment constantly increases, thus there are more and more people who become deaf and disabled from carrying on their jobs and normal social contacts. The technical efforts aimed at limiting exposure to noise, as well as medical prophylactic activities are not efficient enough. Therefore the authors analyse the possibilities of occupational hearing impairment treatment. Pharmacologic preparations likely to affect the temporary and permanent threshold shift, are considered. Within operative treatment, microsurgical technique of implanting microelectrodes to the cochlea is presented, basing on the authors' experiments with 4 patients op]erated and rehabilitated with this method.