Outcome of sudden deafness with and without vertigo

The outcome of unilateral sudden deafness with and without vertigo was evaluated according to the severity of the initial hearing loss, the shape of the audiogram, and other variables. The subjects for this investigation were 1313 patients who had presented to the authors' university hospital from 1972 to 1990 within 2 weeks of the onset of hearing loss. Thirty percent of the patients had accompanying vertigo. Vertigo occurred frequently in patients with severe hearing loss in the high-tone frequencies. Hearing recovery of high-tone frequencies was worse in patients with vertigo than in those without vertigo even when the initial hearing loss was the same. It is hypothesized that these results can be explained by anatomical factors; the cochlear basal turn being more proximal to the vestibular apparatus than the upper turn.