Abstract

Objective: Ménière's disease is a clinical syndrome characterized by the four major symptoms of episodic vertigo, sensorineural hearing loss, tinnitus and aural fullness. Sensorineural hearing loss, especially low frequency, is the characteristic type of audiogram in Ménière's disease. However, it is difficult to distinguish idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSNHL) with vertigo from the first attack of Ménière's disease. The purpose of this study was to investigation the incidence of progression into Ménière’s Disease from low frequency ISSNH.
Methods
Two-hundred eighty-three patients were included in this study. We classified the patients with ISSNHL according to the hearing loss in audiogram and analyzed how much of them actually progressed to Ménière's disease based on diagnosis criteria.
Results
Among the 240 patients, 37.1%(89 patients) were confirmed low frequency ISSNHL and 14.6% (13 patients) of them were diagnosed with Meniere's disease.
Conclusion
This study showed that the progression from low frequency ISSNHL to Ménière's disease was higher than other frequency ISSNHL, as in other studies.

• Keywords: Hearing loss, sudden; Hearing loss, sensorineural; Meniere's disease; Incidence;