Sudden sensory-neural hearing loss has been reported after the use of
the extracorporeal cardiopulmonary bypass apparatus. This study was
conducted on 50 patients who underwent surgery requiring the use of apparatus.
Preoperative, postoperative and long term follow-up audiologic
assessments were performed together with recording of all possible contributing
factors such as the bypass time, aortic clamp time. pert and
postoperative medications in an attempt to cover all possible aspects of
this problem. A bilateral 10 dB increase of threshold including most frequencies
occurred in only 4 patients.
Although an embolic etiology has been suggested in most previously
published reports. doubt is cast on this causation which is discussed in
detail. The very mild biloteral hewing loss in our series can be explained
more likely on the basis of perfusion failure theory in addition to the possibility
of ototoxicity. |
