Hearing loss rather than vestibular loss identifies patient subgroups with different outcomes in Meniere's disease

Objective: This study investigates the relationship between Meniere's disease (MD) duration and both hearing thresholds and vestibular dysfunction.

Design: Retrospective cohort study. First, the relationships between MD duration and pure-tone audiometry thresholds for each frequency, the canal paresis (CP) ratio, and the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) gain were analysed. Second, clinical characteristics, CP values, and VOR gains were compared between patient groups with low and high hearing thresholds to determine whether they exhibited different clinical presentations.

Study sample: The study included 69 patients diagnosed with unilateral MD within a duration of 10 years. A hearing dataset from 306 MD Spanish patients was used to cluster patients according to the hearing profile overtime.

Results: The thresholds at 250-2000 Hz frequencies increased with the duration of the disease. Conversely, vestibular function tests were not related to the duration of MD. Additionally, no statistically significant differences were observed in clinical characteristics, CP values, or VOR gain between patient groups with low and high hearing thresholds.

Conclusions: Hearing loss involves all frequencies in most patients and hearing outcome, rather than vestibular loss, may define patient subgroups in MD. Moreover, not all patients with MD experience hearing loss progression as the duration of the disease increases.