THE VALUATION OF LATE-ONSET AUDITORY DEPR IVATION IN PATIENTS WITH UNILATERAL CONDUCTIVE HEARING-LOSS BEFORE AND AFTER SURGICAL-TREATMENT

Background: This paper will discuss whether long term conductive heari ng loss leads to late onset auditory deprivation as described in the l iterature in patients suffering from bilateral sensorineural hearing l oss and fitted with monaural hearing aids. Method: The patients were e xamined using the Freiburg speech test in the undistorted and distorte d forms (according to Dieroff 1985), and the pure tone threshold was a scertained for each patient. Thirty-six preoperative and postoperative results after tympanoplasty and stapes surgery were evaluated. Follow -up was performed six weeks and six months postoperatively. Twenty-one test persons with normal hearing were investigated. Results: Comparis on showed that the quotient obtained from undistorted and distorted te sts is significantly higher in the affected patients. We even observed a highly significant improvement of this quotient, the speech recogni tion score (according to Bonninghaus/Roser), and the pure tone thresho ld after surgery. Seventy-eight percent of our patients showed an impr oved quotient, and 73% attained a normal value. But in only 29% of all cases did we see a symmetrical quotient in both ears in this period o f time. In the statistical evaluation, we were unable to demonstrate a correlation between the patient's age at that moment, the age at the beginning of hearing loss, and this echo quotient. There is also no co rrelation between the absolute and relative change of the echo quotien t and the duration of hearing loss. Conclusion: It was evident that th e distorted Freiburg speech test is a good method to demonstrate the d eprivation of the auditory system. We observed the improvement of the distorted Freiburger speech test at postoperative intervals of six wee ks and six months. Hearing training should be applied after surgery in an effort to improve the hearing results.