The information that sudden idiopathic sensorineural hearing loss does not need to be treated as a medical emergency is very helpful for primary care physicians in private practice, because this renders immediate referral to ear, nose, and throat doctors or immediate inpatient admission unnecessary.
The pathophysiology and therapy of sudden hearing loss are not known, but to conclude on the basis of doctors’ ignorance of the subject that treatment should be categorized as an individual health service (paid for by patients themselves) seems almost cynical to me, especially as the author emphasized earlier how negatively unilateral hearing loss affects the lives of those who experience it.
The article was lacking information on the course of the pathology with or without treatment. In order to offer therapeutic options to patients, patients with sudden hearing loss will have to be informed about the course of the disease. How common is spontaneous remission, for example? Maybe the author might provide some relevant information now?
References
- 1.Suckfüll M. Perspectives on the pathophysiology and treatment of sudden idiopathic sensorineural hearing loss. Dtsch Arztebl Int. 2009;106(41):669–676. doi: 10.3238/arztebl.2009.0669. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]