Deafness is Treatable

Understanding Autoimmune Ear disease a potentially treatable cause of Deafness.

I N T R O D U C T I O N Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) is a common finding with an exhaustive list of etiologies. Rapidly progressive sensorineural hearing loss is quite distressing to patients as they are abruptly required to function with a reduced level of sensation of their environment. Autoimmune inner ear disease (AIED) is a rare diagnosis and frequently omitted from the differential d...

Carotid atherosclerosis: is it treatable?

The assessment of brachial-artery FMD is a reliable, reproducible and noninvasive tool for evaluating endothelial dysfunction, which, together with endothelial inflammation, causes carotid atherosclerosis. Atorvastatin therapy can reverse endothelial dysfunction after 4 months, and may have significant anti-inflammatory effects if continued for more than 4 months. Importantly, statin therapy ca...

Is acute otitis media a treatable disease?

In this issue of the Journal, investigators in Pittsburgh and in Turku, Finland, respond to the question of whether infants and young children with acute otitis media benefit from amoxicillin– clavulanate therapy initiated at the time of diagnosis.1,2 Physicians who cared for children 50 years ago would be surprised — more likely shocked — that the question is being asked. Before antimicrobial ...

Sudden deafness: is it viral?

A number of theories have been proposed to explain the etiopathogenesis of idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSHL), including viral infection, vascular occlusion, breaks of labyrinthine membranes, immune-mediated mechanisms and abnormal cellular stress responses within the cochlea. In the present paper, we provide a critical review of the viral hypothesis of ISSHL. The evidence rev...

Myasthenia gravis is a rare but treatable disease.