Inner ear decompression sickness has been strongly associated with the presence of right-to-left shunts. The implied involvement of intravascular bubbles shunted from venous to arterial circulations is inconsistent with the frequent absence of cerebral symptoms in these cases. If arterial bubbles reach the labyrinthine artery, they must also be distributing widely in the brain. This discrepancy...

Bone conduction (BC) hearing relies on sound vibration transmission in the skull bone. Several clinical findings indicate that in the human, the skull vibration of the inner ear dominates the response for BC sound. Two phenomena transform the vibrations of the skull surrounding the inner ear to an excitation of the basilar membrane, (1) inertia of the inner ear fluid and (2) compression and exp...

Background: Thalidomide has caused thalidomide embryopathy (TE) in more than 10,000 live-born children and is typically associated with phocomelia as well several other abnormalities such eye or ear malformations internal organ defects. Nowadays, survivors entered middle age, an age that susceptible to breast cancer women.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans for enhancement of inner ear structures of patients with sensorineural hearing loss and documented antibodies to the 68-kd inner ear antigen. STUDY DESIGN Retrospective case review with reexamination of MRI scans. SETTING Outpatient office. PATIENTS Thirty-five patients with autoimmune sensorineural hearing loss defined by audio...

Inner ear sensory epithelia contain mechanosensitive hair cells that transmit information to the brain through innervation with bipolar neurons. Mammalian hair cells do not regenerate and are limited in number. Here we investigate the potential to generate mechanosensitive hair cells from mouse embryonic stem cells in a three-dimensional (3D) culture system. The system faithfully recapitulates ...

CONCLUSION Cell transplantation into the utriculus provides an efficient and non-invasive route to introduce embryonic stem (ES) cells into the vestibular and cochlear portions of the inner ear. OBJECTIVE The transfer of stem cells into the inner ear for therapeutic purposes is an important approach to cure damage to the cochlea and vestibulum. A key issue is to provide an entry point for cel...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effects of the virulence characteristics of specific pneumococcal proteins on the inner ear. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES A histologic comparison of inflammatory cell infiltration and pathologic changes in the round window membrane and inner ear. RESULTS Most of the animals inoculated with high-dose pneumolysin or wild-type bacteria showed severe pathologic changes of ...