Clinical Usefulness of Otoacoustic Emission Sum in Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss Patients

Background and ObjectivesZZSudden hearing loss remain a controversial issue with respect to its prognostic indicators. In a recent study, the change in distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) has been shown to provide useful information about its prognosis. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between the changes of DPOAE and hearing improvement in sudden deafness patients. Subjects and MethodZZSixty-one patients underwent pure tone audiometry (PTA) and DPOAE on their first hospital day ; among them 35 patients underwent DPOAE after 2 weeks. These patients were divided into mild (≤40 dB) group, moderate to moderately severe (41-70 dB) group and severe (≥71 dB) group according to their initial hearing thresholds. ResultsZZOf the 22 patients in the moderate to severe group, 11 patients showed a DPOAE response and 5 patients (45%) showed hearing improved. In 11 non-DPOAE response patients, 4 patients (36.4%) had improved. We compared PTA and OAE sum gap results by analyzing 35 patient’s initial thresholds with those measured 2 weeks after the therapy. The correlation coefficient between the two group was 0.547 (p＜0.05). ConclusionZZThe results show that OAE sum is an efficient and non-invasive objective meth od and that it can be used to monitor the effects of treatment in sudden hearing loss patients. Korean J Otorhinolaryngol-Head Neck Surg 2013;56:212-6 Key WordsZZOtoacoustic emissions ㆍPrognosis ㆍSudden hearing loss.