2015 Articles
Sensorineural Hearing Loss in Non-depressed Essential Tremor Cases and Controls: A Clinical and Audiometric Study
Background: Patients with essential tremor (ET) have an increased prevalence of hearing loss, and depression is a confounding issue for both conditions. We assessed hearing loss in non-depressed ET patients and controls using a questionnaire and audiometric tests.
Methods: The study included 34 patients with ET and 45 volunteers were included. Both groups were asked if they had hearing loss, and pure tone audiometry, speech recognition threshold, tympanogram, short increment sensitivity index (SISI), tone decay, and otoacoustic emission audiological tests were conducted.
Results: Seventeen subjects (50.0%) in the patient group answered “yes” to the question “Do you have hearing loss?” compared to one (2.2%) subject in the control group (p<0.001). The tone decay values of the right ear at 4,000 Hz were higher in the patient group. The number of subjects in which the otoacoustic emissions could not be obtained in the right ear was higher in the ET patients (p = 0.005).
Discussion: The results support the presence of a cochlear pathology in ET and may indicate that ET and sensorineural hearing loss may be components of a common disease process.
Subjects
Files
- 281-6556-1-PB.pdf application/pdf 787 KB Download File
Also Published In
- Title
- Tremor and Other Hyperkinetic Movements
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.7916/D8XW4HKQ
More About This Work
- Academic Units
- Center for Parkinson's Disease and Other Movement Disorders
- Published Here
- January 29, 2015