New developments in diagnosis aid in the treatment and have improved the outlook for those patients with sensorineural hearing loss. Not all such hearing loss is untreatable and it should be approached systematically and enthusiastically. Thorough evaluation should be performed in all patients.

The etiology of sensorineural hearing loss is multifactorial which makes the diagnosis a challenging exercise and often an unsolved mystery. Whilst pure tone audiometry is a mandatory investigation, others such as laboratory and radiology are based on clinical evaluation. This paper puts forward a protocol for the investigation for sensorineural hearing loss.

Hearing impairment is the most common 1sensory deficit in children, and SNHL is the most common form of congenital hearing impairment. It is also a significant health care problem. More than 40 000 children are born in the United States with significant hearing impairment, including about 4000 who are profoundly deaf. The incidence is estimated at about 1 in every 1000 live births. Therefore, t...

Introduction: The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of combined intratympanic and systemic steroid therapy compared with systemic steroid therapy alone in idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSNHL) patients with poor prognostic factors.     Materials and Methods: Seventy-seven patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) who had at least one poor prognostic fa...

There are no recent population-based data on the prevalence of hearing loss in older adults using standard audiometric testing. The population-based Epidemiology of Hearing Loss Study was designed to measure the prevalence of hearing loss in adults aged 48-92 years, residing in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. Hearing thresholds were measured with standardized protocols using pure-tone air- and bone-cond...