Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Sensorineural Hearing Loss

I am writing this to give an insight to people who are searching about this term – “Sensorineural Hearing Loss”. My wife was carrying our kid and it was her 5th month. One day she woke up and she was not able to hear properly in one ear. We thought it was some random issues because of some hormonal imbalance and would get cleared in a day’s time. But that didn’t happen and the state just continued. We went to consult to a doctor in Telerad (RxDx) Bangalore. She did some initial checkups, cleared some wax from that ear and asked us to take a hearing test. We took the hearing test. During the test, she was asked to be inside a sound proof room with an earphone and they would be playing sounds of varying frequencies and she had to press some button when each sound stops. This would help them in identifying how much percentage of hearing got affected. After the test, the report said that, it was a case of Sensorineural Hearing Loss.

This is a case of sudden hearing loss which can happen to anyone when you wake up from bed on some day. There would not be any symptoms of this disease till the very previous day. And there could be 100s of reasons for this such as exposing the ears to heavy/loud voice, virus infection, genetic etc. As per the report, she had lost 35 – 40% of hearing in one ear.

We went back to the doctor and showed this report. She asked us to take steroid tablets orally and informed that, since it happened all of a sudden, there could be some chance that it would rectify. We informed the doctor that she is carrying and it’s her 5th month and enquired if there are any issues to take steroid tablets during this stage. She consulted with our gynecologist (same hospital) and informed that there are no issues.

We decided to take some second opinion on this and consulted with top Veteran ENTs in Kerala. As per them, it’s not advisable to have steroids orally during pregnancy. Meantime, we went to Brookfields hospital, based on my friend’s referral. We consulted ENT Dr. Santosh over there.  We didn't tell him that, we were there for a second opinion. He did some initial examination and later did some tests with a Tuning Fork. Vibrated Tuning fork is placed near her both ears and the central portion of the head and she had to raise her finger when the sound stops. Within couple of minutes, he told us that, it’s a case of Sensorineural Hearing Loss (without hearing test) and asked us to take the test for a confirmation. That time, we told that we came for a second opinion and showed him the test report and the other doctor’s suggestion of having Steroid tablets.

He told us that, he is also not in favor of having it orally. Also explained the doctor’s situation – “Since she is carrying, there is lot of limitation for a doctor as they can’t do most of the tests to find the root cause of the issue. What he can do is trying out some options blindly and see, if it’s working or not. Since it was a sudden hearing loss, there are high chances if we can do something at the earliest.”

He explained that, she would still be able to hear through the other ear and partially through this ear. But the problem would be when someone calls from the side of the infected ear, the sound will reach the other ear first and she would turn the other side and later turns the actual side. Either accept the fact and forget it or do a last try.
He suggested taking a steroid injection directly into the ear, which will by-pass the blood and directly will affect the affected portion only. Chances of risk are comparatively less than 30% compared to an oral intake.

We came back and checked with other ENT doctors in Kerala. They also suggested it as a better option. We discussed about the pros and cons of taking that (all discussions happened because she was carrying that time and there is an amount of risk). Finally we decided to take that last try, since we were not ready to accept that permanent loss and didn’t want to repent later that, we could have tried that at least. So we fixed the injection date with the doctor for the very next day.


Doctor gave her the injection in the ear after having some local anesthesia. The procedure took around 3 hours (Only 1 minute for the injection). Doctor had informed that, he tried this injection in 7 patients and all 7 got their hearing back to normal the very next day. In our case also, the same thing happened and her hearing is back to normal. Now we are parents of a 1 month old baby boy. Both mom and the baby are doing great. We are thankful to God and Dr. Santosh. 

Wanted to write this because, it can happen to anyone any time and people shouldn't wait to take the action for a long time. We also realized that hearing/seeing etc. is a big luxury to us.

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