Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss Case Study

The article,

Sudden Sensorineural hearing loss after non-otologic surgery, much like the title describes, provides two specific cases in which patients went into a non-otologic surgery as a normal hearing adult, but days following the procedure had a decrease in their sensorineural hearing. The first patient discussed was a 44-year-old female, who underwent an abdominal hysterectomy and woke the following morning with a significant unilateral hearing loss. The second patient, was a 63-year-old male who had a craniotomy procedure done, and the day following the surgery experienced severe bilateral hearing loss. Joshua and Peters state that the two different surgical procedures that are involved in a greater percentage of reported sensorineural hearing loss than other

I really enjoyed that Joshua and Peters offered two different case examples in their discussion on the causes for the sensorineural hearing loss. The most interesting section of the article was learning that hearing loss can remain permanent for some patients, such as the example given in case #2. I also liked that the authors gave their theory as to the cause of the hearing loss because I feel it is important for me to understand what may cause this hearing loss because treating a patient after a non-otologic surgery who is now suffering can be confusing and frightening to the patient. Surgery can cause patients a lot of emotional distress to begin with and to wake the morning after and not be able to hear either from one ear or losing their hearing completely would be a very frightening event for a patient. As the nurse, I need to be able to explain to the patient what may have caused it and help them to cope. As a nurse, I should be prepared to care for any complication that occurs following any