Recovery of vestibular-evoked myogenic potential: relationship to other neural disorders in two patients with acute sensorineural hearing loss.

We report the recovery of the inferior vestibular neural system disorder by monitoring the vestibular-evoked myogenic potential (VEMP) in two patients suffering from acute sensorineural hearing loss with vertigo. Patients presented absent VEMP, canal paresis, and severe hearing disorder. After 10 months, the function of the inferior vestibular neural system was recovered in both cases while that of the superior vestibular neural system was recovered in one case and partially recovered in the other. In addition, the hearing sensitivity was only partially recovered in both cases. The recovery of the inferior vestibular neural system was confirmed by our current results. These results suggested that time course of recoveries of the superior and inferior vestibular neural systems, and of the cochlear neural system, were somewhat different in the two cases. Copyright 2002 S. Karger AG, Basel