Abstract
Purpose:
To examine patients with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) with MR.
Material and Methods:
495 consecutive patients with SNHL and 120 age-matched healthy controls were examined. Spin-echo (SE) and fast spin-echo (FSE) images were used with 1.5 T equipment.
Results:
An intracranial abnormality was found in 211 (42.6%) of the patients with 95 (19.2%) along the acoustic pathway. Eleven of the 95 patients had sensory hearing loss while 84 had neural hearing loss with the retrocochlear auditory pathway affected by lesions. In 62 of the 84 patients, the internal acoustic canal and cerebellopontine angle were involved. Twenty-two patients had intra-axial lesions. The controls had no pathologic changes along the auditory pathway.
Conclusion:
MR imaging in a patient with SNHL must cover the entire acoustic pathway from the cochlea to the superior temporal gyrus, and all the components of the auditory pathway should be scrutinized. The FSE-technique can be used to detect the lesions causing SNHL. FSE-sequences can replace SE-sequences.
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