Transtympanic corticoid therapy for acute profound hearing loss

The prognosis of idiopathic sudden hearing loss depends on its severity; acute complete deafness, for example, has a particularly bad prognosis. The treatment of acute deafness is based on a systemic application of corticosteroids. Corticoid concentrations in the cochlea are higher after transtympanic application in comparison to systemic application. We therefore investigated whether an additional transtympanic corticoid therapy gives an advantage over systemic standard therapy. We report on 27 patients with sudden idiopathic profound hearing loss or deafness who were treated in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology, University of Essen, Germany. Fourteen patients were treated with a rheologic infusion therapy with systemic prednisolone. Thirteen patients were treated additionally with methylprednisolone (Urbason) transtympanically through a ventilation tube. In the first group of patients who were treated with infusion therapy and corticoids systemically, three patients had good recovery of hearing. Another five patients had a partial recovery of hearing. The average hearing gain from 0.5–4 kHz was 15 dB. In the group of patients who were treated additionally with local corticoids, two patients reported a good recovery of hearing and another two patients only had a partial recovery of hearing. The average hearing gain in the above-mentioned frequency range was 11 dB. In our patients the additional transtympanic application of corticoids did not result in a significantly improved recovery of hearing in comparison to the patients treated with the standard therapy alone.