Influence of body temperature on the set-up and recovery of noise-induced cochlea damage.

Hypothermia during exposure to noise reduced hair-cell damage which, on the contrary, was prevented from recovering by narcosis and hypothermia. Hyperthermia is apparently able to eliminate the narcosis dependent limitation of metabolism. A noise damage happens to develop by decompensating the excessively overburdened metabolism, whereas recovery seems to depend on the availability of a highly intracellular level of biological energy.