| ObjectiveSudden deafness is one of the emergent and difficult diseases in otology. Because of the unknown cause, any delay or improper treatment can lead to permanent hearing loss, even troublesome sequelae. There are many reports on the current clinical treatment of sudden deafness, But neither Western or Traditional Chinese Medicine treatment, the efficacy is not generally accepted, so there is no universally acknowledged precise treatment for sudden deafness. Even though many studies have shown that Traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture may have more advantages than Western medicine treatment and high-pressure oxygen treatment, they lack large sample reports. Moreover, most of time they mentioned single traditional Chinese treatment or acupuncture treatment, which can't give expression to the advantages of Chinese medicine treatment. In this study, we use the method of retrospective analysis and collect hospitalized cases for 6 years, trying to observe the curative effect of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) therapeutics by large sample, with the hope to make an objective evaluation on the curative effect of TCM therapeutics and the relevant factor influencing it.MethodAccording to the inclusion and exclusion criterion, we select patients with sudden deafness, who have been given TCM therapeutics from January 2005 to December 2010 in the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou TCM University. A number of factors that may affect the curative effect have been included in the study, such as gender, age, ill ear, course of disease, associated symptoms, degree of hearing loss, types of acoustic curve, course of treatment, former hospitalization or not, TCM syndrome type, the beginning time of hearing improvement and so on. The data were analyzed by statistics and chi-square test was taken in single-factor, comparing the curative effect in different group; then Logistic regression analysis was taken to evaluate the effect of relevant factors.ResultThe study included 267 patients(269 ears), aged between 10 and 93 years, in which 123 patients were male,144 were female, whose average age was 45.45±16.62;the shortest course of disease was one day and the longest one year, and their average time 17.07±35.31, the course of treatment between 3 and 55 days, the average course of disease 19.24±9.26. Besides,239 cases(89.51%) have tinnitus,95 cases (35.58%) have vertigo,83 cases (31.09%) have ear plug,137 cases (51.31%) have treated in other western medicine hospital before.In these 267 patients with sudden deafness treated by the TCM therapeutics, 78 cases recovered,50 cases had notable effect, and 50 cases had effective effect, while 98 cases were ineffective. The curative rate was 29.21%, the curative and excellent rate was 44.57%, the total effective rate was 63.3%, and it was as high as 76.76% when the patients got treatment within one week,77.30% when the patients got treatment within two weeks,31.71% after two weeks. As the remission in associated symptoms, the rate of tinnitus remission was 90.79%, the remission rate of dizziness was 94.74%, and that of ear plug 95.18%.Factors influencing the curative effect analysis are as follow: single-factor analysis suggests the course of disease and former hospitalization or not are efficacy-related (P<0.05), but gender, age, ill ear, associated symptoms, degree of hearing loss, types of acoustic curve, course of treatment, TCM syndrome type, the beginning time of hearing improvement are unrelated to the curative effect (P>0.05), Multi-factor analysis showed that course of disease has significant correlation with the curative effect (P<0.01), the longer the course of disease was, the worse the curative effect was. The comprehensive analysis of course of disease and former hospitalization or not shows that former hospitalization or not has nothing to do with the curative effect (P=0.328) when the course of disease is more than two weeks, but within two weeks, the curative effect of the patients without other hospital treatment(82.14%) is higher than those who have been treated before(69.86%), in which statistical analysis shows P is extremely near to 0.05(P=0.051).ConclusionThe TCM therapeutics has better curative effect on sudden deafness. The total effective rate was 63.3%, and it up to 82.14% when the patients got TCM therapeutics within two weeks as well as no other hospital treatment. The TCM therapeutics also has satisfying effect on remission of the associated symptoms, such as tinnitus, dizziness and ear plug. The course of disease has significant correlation with the effect, the best time of treatment is within two weeks, and the effect will get lower after two weeks. But there is still very few patients got effective recover even the course of disease is as long as one year, so the patients within one year can't give up treatment; In this study, we observe the follow factor have no correlation with the effect:age, ill ear, degree of hearing loss, types of acoustic curve, course of treatment, TCM syndrome types, the beginning time of hearing improvement. |
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