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Audiology Research
  • Audiology Research is published by MDPI from Volume 10 Issue 2 (2020). Previous articles were published by another publisher in Open Access under a CC-BY (or CC-BY-NC-ND) licence, and they are hosted by MDPI on mdpi.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with PAGEPress.
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  • Open Access

9 January 2012

Intratympanic Injection of Dexamethasone for Treatment of Tinnitus in Patients with Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss

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Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan
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Abstract

The purpose of this study is to test the effectiveness of intratympanic dexamethasone injections as a treatment for severe tinnitus in idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). We studied 37 patients who received intratympanic dexamethasone injections and 14 control patients who did not receive it, with severe tinnitus after onset of unilateral sudden SNHL. Hearing level did not change during this study in any patient. The relationship between the duration of tinnitus and effectiveness of treatment was investigated in sudden SNHL. We used a visual analogue scale to evaluate 51 patients with severe tinnitus at the stage of stable hearing level after idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss. Forty-one per cent of patients showed significant improvement after treatment. The average period between onset of sudden sensorineural hearing loss and initiation of intratympanic dexamethasone injection was significantly shorter (207 days) in the improved group than in the unchanged group (482 days) (P<0.001). In control group, one of 14 patients presented significant improvement spontaneously. Intratympanic dexamethasone treatment may be effective in treatment of severe tinnitus after sudden SNHL at the stage of stable hearing level, and the shorter the period from onset of sudden deafness to the start of intratympanic dexamethasone treatment, the greater the improvement in tinnitus that can be expected.

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