BACKGROUND Sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL) is a common condition in which patients lose the hearing in one ear within 3 days. Systemic glucocorticoid treatments have been used as standard therapy for SSHL; however, about 20% of patients do not respond. We tested the safety and efficacy of topical insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) application using gelatin hydrogels as a treatment for...

Introduction: Tympanoplasty is indicated to restore hearing disability and prevent recurrent otorrhea.  Materials and Methods: This study was a retrospective review of patients who underwent tympanoplasty with or without mastoidectomy over a 1-year period.  Results: A total of 789 tympanoplasties were reviewed, with a male-to-female ratio of 1:1.1. In total, 91% and 9% of tympanoplasties were p...

Sensorineural hearing loss in elderly patients (presbycusis) relatively often coexists with annoying tinnitus (termed presbytinnitus [PT] by Claussen). The purpose of this study was to verify the conditions of improvement in patients treated for PT. We fitted with hearing aids 33 PT patients (ages 60-89 years) and questioned them about subjective hearing results. Assessment tools included compr...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate the initial and longer term success of closing the air-bone gap (ABG) to 20 dB in ossiculoplasty with canal wall down mastoidectomy. METHODS This study was conducted at a private otologic practice. Patients included those who underwent ossiculoplasty from 1989 to 1996 with canal wall down mastoidectomy, whether primary or revision (33 from a tot...

Cochlear implantation has been performed for 16 years by investigators at Semmelweis University. During this period, different types of cochlear implants have been used and, in 30% of cases, hearing was observed to be restored in the nonimplanted ear. In addition to contralateral hearing improvement, significant improvement was observed in the caloric responsiveness of the nonoperated labyrinth...

Normal-hearing subjects show improved speech understanding when they wear conventional passive hearing protectors in noisy surroundings. In contrast, hearing-impaired subjects are at a disadvantage. Sound attenuation exacerbates the handicap from hearing loss (Abel et al., 1982). Level-dependent (active) hearing protectors which provide limited amplification of sounds below 85 dBA have the oppo...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the improvement in speech intelligibility in noise obtained with an assistive real-time fixed endfire array of bidirectional microphones in comparison with an omnidirectional hearing aid microphone in a realistic environment. DESIGN The microphone array was evaluated physically in anechoic and reverberant conditions. Perceptual tests of speech intelligibility in noise we...

Loss of hearing is a known problem in patients with chronic renal failure, occurring in 40-XO% of cases and being most often of the high frequency sensorineural type. We performed a study on 50 patients with this disease, including 20 who had undergone a successful kidney transplantation. Our results show an 80% incidence of hearing loss in these patients and a chance of improvement in at l...