The Diagnostic Value of Auditory Steady State Response in Patients of Idiopathic Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Choi, Young Ho; Cho, Hyong Ho; Eom, Tae Ho; Cho, Yong Beom

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) is a medical emergency when an individual experiences at least 30 dB (decibels) of sudden SSNHL, occurring over a time period of three days or less. Pure tone audiometry (PTA) is by far the most widely used to diagnose SSNHL. Besides PTA, auditory steady-state response (ASSR) is also generally accepted to predict the hearing of SSNHL patients objectively and effectively. We analyzed correlation between ASSR and PTA in SSNHL patients, compared that with the corresponding data in non-SSNHL patients, and studied the usefulness of correlation between ASSR and PTA to forecast prognosis of SSNHL in clinical applications.
SUBJECTS AND METHOD
We retrospectively analyzed the charts of SSNHL patients. We analyzed the correlation between the thresholds of PTA, ASSR, and audiotory brainstem response (ABR) in SSNHL, compared that with corresponding data in non-SSNHL patients.
RESULTS
There was a very strong positive linear correlation between the average hearing threshold of ASSR and PTA among the non-SSNHL patients. Furthermore, there was relatively strong positive linear correlation between the average hearing threshold of ASSR and PTA among SSNHL patients. Also there was a normal positive linear correlation between the average hearing threshold of ABR and PTA among SSNHL patients. The average hearing threshold difference between ASSR and PTA among SSNHL patients was smaller compared with non-SSNHL patients, and this was statistically significant.
CONCLUSION
There was a strong correlation between the average hearing threshold of ASSR and PTA among non-SSNHL & SSNHL patients. Compared to ABR, ASSR showed greater correlation with PTA in the SSNHL patients. We concluded that ASSR could be a useful diagnostic tool in SSNHL.