title: Hearing assessment in Menière's disease.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To investigate the level of hearing loss and the configuration of the mean audiometric curve over the course of Menière's disease, correcting the data according to patient age.
  
  
  METHODS
  A retrospective study of 3,963 hearing tests.
  
  
  METHODS
  Descriptive, longitudinal study of pure-tone audiometries of 237 patients at a tertiary hospital who had been diagnosed with definitive Menière's disease according to the American Academy of Otorhinolaryngology criteria. All audiometric results were age-corrected, and patients were followed for 1 to 31 years. In patients who had undergone surgery, only the data collected before the operation were assessed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In patients with unilateral disease, the mean hearing loss was characteristically low frequency, even in very advanced stages of the disease. Hearing loss was accentuated at 5 and 15 years from onset. In bilateral cases, hearing loss was slightly more severe and the average loss produced a flatter audiometric curve than in unilateral cases.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In Menière's disease, audiometry results corrected for patient age show an inherent upward-sloping configuration of the mean audiometric curve at all time points during the disease. The hearing pattern differs between unilateral and bilateral disease. The audiometric curve configuration may be an indicator of future bilateral disease.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Complejo Hospitalario Universitario Albacete, Albacete, Spain. belinchon@comv.es
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Belinchon
authors.forename: Herminio
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Perez-Garrigues
authors.forename: Jose Maria
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Tenias
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lopez
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D002648:Child; D018450:Disease Progression; D005260:Female; D006312:Hearing Loss, Bilateral / Q000175:diagnosis; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008575:Meniere Disease / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D055815:Young Adult