Pure-tone and speech audiometry in patients with Meniere's disease

The aim of this study was to reinvestigate many of the claims in the litera ture about hearing loss in patients with Meniere's disease, We carried this out on a well-defined group of patients under well-controlled circumstance s. Thus, we were able to find support for sonic claims and none for many ot hers. As part of a diagnostic protocol, pure-tone and speech audiometry was performed on 111 patients with Meniere's disease according to the 'Definit ion Meniere Groningen'. This was a prospective clinical cohort study. Affec ted ears of patients suffering from Meniere's disease show reduced hearing, both in pure-tone and in speech audiometry. A classification method was de vised to determine audiogram shape in an objective manner. The results of t his method indicate that affected ears more frequently show 'low' or 'low high' hearing losses (P=0.006). The shape of the hearing loss does not dep end on the duration of the affection of the disease. In combination with th e fact that the average hearing loss does not correlate with the duration o f the disease, this leads to the conclusion that, if a classification of th e hearing loss in Menieres disease is possible, such a classification canno t be connected to the duration. This conclusion is further supported by the fact that no relationship is found between the duration of the disease and the classification of the hearing loss over the 3 months before hospital a dmission, as given by the patients in a questionnaire. A relationship betwe en the (objective) audiometric data and the (subjective) classification of the hearing loss by the patient seems to be present, but is not very strong . Correlations between pure-tone and speech audiometry are present as in no n-Meniere ears (r = 0.899, P < 0.001). and no indications are found of redu ced speech discrimination relative to the expectation based on pure-tone lo ss. The audiogram shape does not appear to play any additional role in spee ch discrimination (in addition to the influence of the average pure-tone lo ss).