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Objective: Sudden hearing loss is considered to be an urgent ENT problem due to its diagnosis and treatment with often unknown etiology. In experimental animal studies, damage of hair cells of the inner ear with noise, viruses, autotoxic agents and hypoxia has been shown to play role in the etiology. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is used in the treatment of sudden hearing loss by restoring the reduced oxygen pressure in the cochlea. In this study, it was aimed to detect the impact of hyperbaric oxygen therapy on cognitive functions of cases.
Method: Sudden hearing loss patients with no other medical problems and treated with HBO were included in the study. Pure tone audiometry tests and psychometric measurement tests (Serial Digit Learning Test, The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory) of patients were performed three times; before treatment, after 10th and 20th HBO sessions.
Results: Twenty sessions of HBO treatment with 2.4 ATA pressure lasting 120 minutes (25 minutes 100% oxygen and 5 minutes air breathing in each session, three times) was applied to two male and one female patient with age of 48, 53 and 37, respectively. Pure tone audiometry and psychometric test results of patients according to the HBO sessions were evaluated in Table 1.
Conclusion: Summing up these cases, improvement in cognitive parameters were observed in two cases, one case showed no change. Many studies revealed that HBO treatment improves cognitive functions and quality of life especially in patients with traumatic brain injury. This effect is not known exactly but it is thought that HBO regulates brain metabolism especially it is effective on glial cells. It may not be correct to suggest that this situation alone may be effective in improving cognitive function. On the other hand, there are opinions that this treatment increases neuroplasticity, and even create new synapses and axonal connections.