Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss
Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss
Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss
Imagine waking up tomorrow feeling dizzy, nauseous, and your ears just will not stop popping. What is wrong? After about two weeks of experiencing this all the time, you go to doctor after doctor trying to find out what in the world is wrong with you. Soon, you find your self at an otolaryngologist, a doctor that specializes in the inner ear. He finally diagnoses you with Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SSNHL). When I was ten years old, after going to some five different doctors, I was diagnosed with Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss Syndrome.
In order to understand the loss of hearing, we must first understand how we hear and what it means to us. Hearing all begins by the creation of a sound. Then the ”sound waves are collected by the outer ear and channeled along the ear canal to the eardrum.” After that, “when the sound waves reach the eardrum, the impact creates vibrations, which are transferred through a series of three tiny bones” (
“Most otolaryngologists define Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss as a “…loss that is greater than 30 decibels (dB) in three contiguous frequencies and that occurs over a period of less than 3 days” (
Several studies support viruses as the etiology of sudden SNHL. Mumps, measles, herpes zoster, and infectious mononucleosis may involve the labyrinth as part of a recognized clinical disease. However, viruses that cause upper “respiratory tract infections” such as adenovirus have also been postulated to cause sudden SNHL (
In any case, unlike many upper respiratory infections, SSNHL is neither epidemic nor seasonal.
The vascular theory holds that partial or complete occlusion of the cochlear vasculature may cause idiopathic sudden SNHL. There are several clinical disease states that have been shown to cause sudden hearing loss by disrupting the blood supply to the labyrinth (
Also vascular spasms have been thought to be a factor in SSNHL due to reports of migraine headaches causing temporary, or reversible hearing loss. The membrane rupture theory is based upon the rupture of the “delicate inner ear membrane and fistulae of the round and/or oval window.”