Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Abstract

A computerized Ovid search of MEDLINE 1970-March 2004 was performed. The terms “hearing loss,” “deafness,” “hearing loss, sensorineural,” and “hearing loss, sudden” were exploded and the resulting articles were combined. These articles were then cross-referenced with articles obtained by exploding the term “steroids.” This process yielded 320 publications. These studies were then reviewed to identify those that met the following inclusion criteria: 1) a discrete set of patients with idiopathic sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) of “acute” or “sudden” onset or occurring over ≤3 days, 2) intervention with systemic steroids versus placebo or systemic steroids versus no intervention, 3) outcome measured with standard audiometry (i.e., pure tone and speech reception thresholds, speech discrimination scores). Studies with the following characteristics were excluded: a) patients with a known cause of SNHL, nonacute or repetitive SHNL, b) intervention with intratympanic steroids (see Section 13.D), c) comparison of steroids with another therapy, d) amalgamation of patients receiving other treatments with either the steroid or nonsteroid treatment groups.