Pretreatment Hearing Level—Another Prognostic Factor in Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss—Reply

In Reply We thank Dr Wu and colleagues for their interest and comments on our research. Various factors may affect hearing recovery after SSHL, such as age, degree of hearing loss, type of hearing loss, interval from onset of symptoms to treatment, tinnitus, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and the presence of vertigo. We were unable to include the hearing level at onset into our analyses owing to the lack of corresponding data in the included studies. Moreover, only 1 of the included studies assessed the possible association between the presence of vertigo and hearing recovery in patients with severe sudden sensorineural hearing loss (≥60 dB). We also think that the opinion by Dr Wu et al that the presence of vertigo is significantly correlated only with hearing recovery in the group with profound SSHL may have implications for the understanding of the mechanisms of SSHL with vertigo, but we were unable to retrieve the raw data. At present, the pathogenesis, clinical manifestations, optimal treatments, and prognostic factors of SSHL are not clear. We are in the process of validating the occurrence of vertigo and its possible role in SSHL. A complete analysis of this role will require more unbiased studies with prospectively gathered data in a large sample size to estimate the precise association of vertigo with the clinical manifestation and prognosis of SSHL.

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