A Comparison of the Short-Term Outcome in Patients with Acute Low-Tone Sensorineural Hearing Loss

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY: We aimed to compare the short-term outcome of patients with acute low-tone sensorineural hearing loss (ALHL) treated with steroid alone, diuretics alone or combination treatment. PROCEDURES: Between April 2000 and March 2009, we retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 156 patients with a diagnosis of ALHL. All patients were followed up until improvement or for 8 weeks from the initial examination. Patients were treated with steroid alone (n = 49), diuretics alone (n = 40), combination treatment (n = 46) or they received neither steroid nor diuretics (n = 21). RESULTS: The steroid-diuretic combination therapy for ALHL showed significantly better results than the steroid or diuretic treatments alone (p < 0.05). There were no clinically significant differences in the outcome between the steroid- and diuretic-alone treatments. CONCLUSION AND MESSAGE: The etiology of ALHL is described as both an endolymphatic hydrops and an autoimmunological mechanism so that, as expected, the steroid-diuretic combination therapy was more effective than the steroid or diuretic treatments alone.