Clinical Researches Of Auditory Neuropathy And Study Of The Locus Of Pathologies In Auditory Neuropathy

Auditory neuropathy (AN) first named by Starr in 1996, which has the specific clinical characteristics, is one kind of sensorineural hearing loss caused by the injury of acoustic nerve branch of the eighth cranial nerve. The most important audiological characteristic of AN patients is that auditory brainstem responses (ABR) are absent or abnormal severely, but evoked otoacoustic emissions (EOAE) are normally recorded, and the speech hearing is worse obviously than the pure tone hearing, and the audiogram is bilateral ascending curve mostly, and pure tone auditory threshold is higher obviously at low frequencies, and acoustic stapedius reflex is absent and the contralateral suppression effect of distortion product otoacoustic emissions(DPOAE) is disappeared.AN is different from other common sensorineural deafness, which has the specific hearing impairment. AN has attracted more and more attention recently. The name of AN and site of AN lesion are still need discuss.The pathogeny and pathogenesis of AN are unknown. The effective treatment of AN is still absent. The present subject has been the one of the hotspots in Otorhinolaryngology.