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This study investigated the effect of sound therapy combined with drug therapy (SDT) on gap detection threshold and speech recognition scores in patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL).Patients with SSNHL were grouped randomly into SDT and drug therapy (DT) groups. All patients received standard drug treatment and patients in the SDT group additionally received sound stimulation for the affected ears for 6 days. Pure tone audiogram, speech recognition scores at normal and time-compressed rates under quiet and noisy conditions, and the gap detection threshold of the SDT and DT groups before treatment and on day 6 and 30 after treatment were compared.There were 20 patients in the SDT group and 24 in the DT group. The pure tone thresholds of affected ears were significantly lower in the SDT group on day 6 after treatment than those in the DT group at 125 and 250 Hz. Significantly lower gap detection thresholds and higher speech recognition scores under noisy conditions were observed at the normal and time-compressed rates in the SDT group than those in the DT group on day 6 and 30 after treatment. Significant correlations were observed between the gap thresholds and speech recognition scores in a noisy environment at normal and time-compressed rates on day 6 and 30.SDT may improve the recovery of hearing abilities, such as the gap in noise thresholds and speech recognition in noise, in the case of SSNHL.ChiCTR-IOR-17012262.

We aimed to retrospectively analyze the therapeutic outcomes of using glucocorticoid combined with a vasodilator, breviscapine, versus glucocorticoid alone in patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) and to explore the impact on different audiometric curves.Data from 154 patients were collected between January 2017 and December 2018. Patients received treatments of either glucocorticoid combined with breviscapine (GC + Bre) or glucocorticoid alone (GC). These two groups were stratified into low frequencies SSNHL (LF-SSNHL), high frequencies SSNHL (HF-SSNHL), all frequencies SSNHL (AF-SSNHL), and total deafness SSNHL (TD-SSNHL) subgroups according to their corresponding audiograms. The hearing level was evaluated by pure tone audiometry, and hearing recovery was calculated by comparing the pure tone average (PTA) at pretreatment and 4 weeks after therapy.Hearing recovery was significantly greater for GC + Bre than GC-only treatment in the AF-SSNHL and TD-SSNHL subgroups (P 0.05) and to a lesser extent in the LF-SSNHL and HF-SSNHL subgroups (P 0.05). Logistic regression analysis also showed a favorable outcome for SSNHL in the GC + Bre group (odds ratio 2.848, P 0.05).Treating SSNHL using glucocorticoid combined with breviscapine could be more beneficial than using glucocorticoid alone, especially for patients with AF-SSNHL and TD-SSNHL.ChiCTR18000170072.