الاعتلال العصبي السمعي : الانتشار و التدبير

Abstract EN

Background & Objective: Auditory Neuropathy (AN) has become a recent accepted clinical entity first described in 1996 and characterized by normal outer hair cell function and anomalous or absent auditory nerve function .

The otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) and/or cochlear microphonics (CM) is normal with absent or desynchronous waves generated in brainstem auditory evoked potentials (BAEPs) However, no study was conducted about its prevalence and management procedures in Syria.

This study was conducted to determine the prevalence and management of AN in Syria as well as study of auditory performance and speech intelligibility.

Materials & Methods: It is a case series study on children referred to audiology center at AAMAL organization between 1/1/2015 and 31/12/2015 diagnosed with sensorineural hearing loss.

The study include cases diagnosed with auditory neuropathy by auditory brain stem response (ABR) and Otoacoustic emission (OAE).

The audiograms configuration and management procedures were studied in addition to the international standardization of auditory performance and speech intelligibility.

Results: 423 cases referred to the Audiology Center at AAMAL organization and had sensorineural hearing loss, six cases of them had normal OAE, and none of the cases admitted cochlear microphones.

because this test was not available in the center one case was excluded because of an associated neurological disorder.

All of the 6 cases were diagnosed with profound hearing loss by ABR and were subject to management by the hearing aids and none of them was managed with cochlear implants.

Conclusions: The prevalence of AN in this study is 1.4% in the children who were diagnosed with profound high frequencies sensorineural hearing loss Regarding the factors, auditory performance and speech intelligibility were variable as well as the audiogram configurations.

Auditory performance and speech intelligibility were variables in spite of intensive rehabilitation to most of the cases.

Cochlear implant was not operationalized in any case in spite of the possible benefit from it, Because of the importance of detecting CM in diagnosis of AN and the absence of OAE in some cases diagnosed with AN, CM test must be enrolled in the criteria of diagnosing AN, not using OAE alone.

Moreover, performed CI is advised upon in such cases