Does salvage treatment in sudden sensorineural hearing loss work?

Many treatment strategies for sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) have been discussed, but the high spontaneous recovery rate (32-65%) of idiopathic SSNHL and differing treatment guidelines make comparing outcomes difficult. Systemic steroids are the most common first-line therapy with significant...

The ‘My Hearing Explained’ tool: audiologist and client perceptions

The study notes that the pure tone audiogram has been the primary clinical and counselling tool used by clinicians to assess and describe hearing thresholds to individuals and families since 1922. The Ida Institutes, ‘My Hearing Explained’ tool has become...

Hurdle jumping

This article deserves a little attention, rather like settling into conversation. As the writers state, listening is an effort and is a tricky field of study when combining multiple physiological measures. In order to gain an understanding, they suggest: consider...

Hearing difficulties and memory problems

Since the Lancet Commission report in 2020, we have all been aware that untreated hearing loss is potentially one of the biggest modifiable risk factors for dementia in midlife. Hearing loss is also associated with other risk factors for dementia,...

Advances in auditory implants

This article provides an overview of auditory implants. Implanted auditory devices may be classified into bone conduction implants (BCI) and active middle ear implants (AMEI) that stimulate cochlear hair cells, and cochlear implants (CI) that stimulate neural structures. CIs bypass...

Conductive hearing loss and temporal processing

This Turkish study looked at the effect of using hearing aids on auditory temporal processing (the ability of the hearing system to process the temporal properties of a sound stimulus in a certain period of time) in conductive hearing loss....

Ethnic inequalities in hearing aid use

Recent events, including the COVID-19 pandemic, have once again highlighted health inequalities experienced by people from ethnic minority backgrounds. Our Editors’ Choice paper shows that there are inequalities in hearing aid use and includes the stark finding that ethnicity is...

Sudden sensorineural hearing loss – who will get better?

Idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSNHL) is a rare but potentially devastating condition. For patients presenting with this condition, prognosis is of paramount importance. Wu et al begin to address this issue by retrospectively studying 17 potential prognostic factors for...

Effects of diet and exercise on tinnitus

Subjective tinnitus is the perception of sound without any external stimulus. There is no consensus on the aetiology of tinnitus. Obesity is one condition that has been associated with subjective tinnitus. The authors conducted a randomised controlled trial to assess...

Systematic review and meta-analysis showing benefit of cochlear implantation in adults with single-sided deafness

This article presents results of a systematic review and meta-analysis to further investigate the impact of unilateral cochlear implantation (CI) in adults with single-sided deafness (SSD) with regards to speech perception in quiet and noise, tinnitus, sound localisation and quality...

What is trendy?

This edition of Seminars in Hearing focused on the results from the MarkeTrak 2022. Now, the relevance to the UK market might be slight limited with some of the data but there are certainly a few interesting nuggets for our...

An understandable backup

This small study comparing the auditory temporal processing of seven younger adults with that of seven older adults does not show anything breathtakingly new in its conclusions. After the assessment to rule out compounding factors such as middle ear pathology,...