Posttaumatic hearing disorders. Diagnostics and therapyAbstractThe

The present paper is a retrospective chart analysis of 115 patients treated after occupational accidents. They all suffered from hearing disorders, either after blunt head trauma (40%), acute noise trauma or after whiplash injury. Treatment consisted of medical and surgical measures so that the majority of the hearing disorders, e.g. sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), combined HL and peripheral tinnitus, could be either completely restored or improved. A poor prognosis was correlated with central auditory changes, e.g. cen-tral tinnitus or hyperacusis. Moreover, a time interval of several months between the injury and the onset of treatment also worsened the overall prognosis. In our series, this was a rare exception and best outcome can be expected after starting treatment within the first 20 days after the trauma.