A Clinical Study of Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss

돌발성 난청 치료에 관한 임상적 고찰

Introduction : The causes of sudden sensorineural hearing loss have not been detemined with precision until recently, but viral infections and vascular insufficiencies, such as vascular spasm, occlusion of sludging of erythrocytes were considered as major factors. The treatment has not been determined with precision until recently. It is similar to dizziness(眩暈). sudden dcafncss(暴聾) and congestion-fire deafness(痰火聾) in Oriental Medicine. It is very rare that someone has sudden hearing loss and visit Oriental Medicine Clinic right that time. But we expect if they take a Oriental treatment on thc right time. more effective for their symptom. Subjects : Following conclusions were reached by measuring results of oricntal medical treatments for 40 patients who visited the clinic between January of 2000 and December of 2002, and received treatments continuously for more than 1 months of time. Methods : Among the selected 40 patients. 30 patients belong to Group Ⅰ, which consisted of patients who had already visited a general hospital prior to visiting this clinic, achieved no recovery at all from sudden deafness despite going through more than 5 days of hospitalized treatments of steroidal medications. Group Ⅱ was consisted of 10 patients of sudden deafness who did not experience any steroidal treatments from other hospital prior to the oriental medical treatment. Results and conclusion : According to differentiation of syndrome. among 30 patients of the Group Ⅰ. 21 were categorized as excess syndrome patients and remaining 9 as deficiency syndrome paticnts. Among 10 patients of For Group Ⅱ, 5 were excess syndrome patients and remaining 5 were deficiency syndrome patients. Among Group Ⅰ, recovery ratio of excess syndrome patients was 47.7$\%$ and deficiency syndrome patients was 44.4$\%$ adding up recovery ratio of the group to be 46.1$\%$. Among Group Ⅱ, recovery ratio of excess syndrome patients was 80$\%$ and deficiency syndrome patients was 100$\%$ adding up recovery ratio of the group to be 90$\%$. Oriental medical treatments are generally more effective(90$\%$ recovery ratio) for Sudden Deafness than steroidal treatments. Oriental medical treatments are almost equally effective for both excess syndrome patients and deficiency syndrome patients. However, steroidal treatments for excess syndrom patients(45$\%$ recovery ratio) is much less effective than deficiency syndrome patients(73$\%$ recovery ratio). This indicates that steroidal treatments should be applied selectively to deficiency syndrome patients if applied at all. Even for patients with sudden deafness which hospitalized steroidal treatments did not result in any recovery at all, oriental medical treatments were able to achieve 46.1$\%$ recovery ratio.