SNHL is a major cause of childhood disability worldwide, affecting 6 in 1000 children. For children with prelingual hearing loss, early diagnosis and treatment is critical to optimizing speech and language development, academic achievement, and social and emotional development. Cross-sectional imaging has come to play an important role in the evaluation of children with SNHL because otolaryngol...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to investigate changes in the hearing thresholds during the first year of life in infants who failed the newborn hearing screening (NHS) test and of infants treated in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). METHODS From March 2007 to November 2010, 193 healthy infants who failed the NHS test and 51 infants who were treated in the NICU were referred for e...

Mitochondrial diseases (MD) are a clinically heterogeneous group of disorders that arise as a result of dysfunction of the mitochondrial respiratory chain. Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) is often associated to mitochondrial dysfunctions both in syndromic, nonsyndromic forms. SNHL has been described in association to different mitochondrial multisystemic syndromes, often characterized by an i...

IMPORTANCE Although smoking and secondhand smoke exposure are associated with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) in children and adults, the possible association between prenatal smoke exposure and hearing loss has not been investigated despite the fact that more than 12% of US children experience such prenatal exposure each year. OBJECTIVE To investigate whether exposure to prenatal tobacco s...

OBJECTIVES To examine the relationship between speech intelligibilities among the similar level of hearing loss and threshold elevation of the auditory brainstem response (ABR). METHODS The relationship between maximum speech intelligibilities among similar levels of hearing loss and relative threshold elevation of the click-evoked ABR (ABR threshold - pure tone average at 2,000 and 4,000 Hz)...

OBJECTIVE Selection of diagnostic tests for children with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) is influenced by clinical suspicion. Testing results reported in the literature are similarly biased. We evaluate the usefulness of a comprehensive diagnostic battery for each child. STUDY DESIGN Retrospective review. SETTING Tertiary care university hospital. PATIENTS A total of 270 children refer...

Background/objectives Hearing loss (HL) is associated with certain diseases and affects health, resulting in a low quality of life. Some components of the metabolic syndrome (MetS) coincide with the risk factors for sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). To date, very few studies have examined the link between MetS and HL. The aim of the current study was to try to understand the potential associat...

Vestibular schwannomas (VSs) are the most common tumours of the cerebellopontine angle. Ninety-five percent of people with VS present with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL); the mechanism of this SNHL is currently unknown. To establish the first model to study the role of VS-secreted factors in causing SNHL, murine cochlear explant cultures were treated with human tumour secretions from thirtee...

The classic view of sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) is that the "primary" targets are hair cells, and that cochlear-nerve loss is "secondary" to hair cell degeneration. Our recent work in mouse and guinea pig has challenged that view. In noise-induced hearing loss, exposures causing only reversible threshold shifts (and no hair cell loss) nevertheless cause permanent loss of >50% of cochlear-...

Background: Hearing impairment is the most common otolaryngologic manifestation of aging. Objectives: Few studies have focused on Hearing Loss (HL) in the Iranian “normal” elderly population. This study aimed to evaluate audiological problems in the normal elderly people of the rural areas of Rasht City in the north of Iran. Materials & Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2...