농형(聾型) 돌발성난청의 청력회복

Background and Objectives: The number of patients with sudden deafness has gradually increased recently. Also it tends to be more severe in degree of hearing loss and poorer prognosis. Especially in profound sudden deafness, the recovery rate is poorer than non-profound sudden deafness. So we hypothesize profound sudden deafness has somewhat different healing process compared with non-profound sudden deafness and analysed clinical characteristics of this disease. Materials and Methods: We reviewed the chart of 555 cases of patients with sudden deafness from January of 1995 to December of 2001. Of 555 cases profound hearing loss was found in 78 cases (14.1%) . Results: 1) The recovery rate of profound sudden deafoess was 55.1%, which was lower than that of non-proufound sudden deafness. Profound sudden deafness shows more frequent in female and the highest incidence at fifth decade. The recovery rate was also highest at the same age group. 2) Incidence of dizziness was higher in profound group and was related to the lower recovery rate than cases without dizziness. 3) About 30% of profound sudden deafness had mild to total deafness on the opposite side, which cases had poor prognosis than cases with normal hearing of the opposite side. 4) 55.1% of profound sudden deafness had increasing IgG titer in viral antibody study, which was higher rate than non-profound sudden deafness. 5) Many cases of profound sudden deafness had retrocochlear abnormality compared to non-profound sudden deafness. 6) In profound sudden deafness cases, so-called critical point from onset to beginning of treatment was 10 days, which had statistical significance. 7) The later begining of treatment was performed, the worse of final hearing threshold was resulted, and there was negative correlation between them (r=-0.429), and was statistically significant (p=0.004). 8) In about 49% of profound sudden deafness cases, fixing period of final hearing level was longer than 3 weeks, which suggested that the longer duration of treatment is necessary than usual sudden deafness. Conclusion: It was suggested that profound sudden deafness has more severe in pathologic abnormality than non-profound sudden deafness. Especially the rate of viral infection was higher in profound sudden deafness group. It may have good recovery result with somewhat longer duration of intensive care. (J Clinical Otolaryngol 2003;14:81–91)