Acute otitis media with transient sensorineural hearing loss. A case study.

A patient had acute otitis media with transient sensorineural hearing loss. Early symptoms included otalgia, progressive sensorineural hearing loss, and tinnitus with inflammation of the tympanic membrane. During the second week a conductive component emerged resulting in a 60-dB mixed loss in the 2- to 4-kHz region. The conductive component lasted 15 days while the sensorineural hearing loss recovered more slowly, with complete recovery at 6 months. Audiologic measures included conventional and extended high-frequency audiometry, 226-Hz and multifrequency tympanometry, binaural speech recognition, auditory brain-stem response, and psychoacoustic tuning curves.