[Hearing impairment in the so-called normal ear during Menière's disease].

A detailed audiological examination of 84 specially selected patients was performed. They had Meniere's disease without any audiometric changes in the so-called normal ear. The hearing function was characterized on the basis of threshold tonic audiometry, ultrasound sensitivity, lower limit of perceived sound frequencies, hearing discomfort level, dynamic range of the hearing field, and intelligibility of low voice speech masked by noise. It was demonstrated that all patients with Meniere's disease on the side of the so-called normal ear, where no symptoms of hearing insufficiency can be detected by routine audiometry, showed hearing impairment: their discriminatory capacity of low voice speech masked by noise significantly decreased giving evidence for bilateral hearing problems involved in Meniere's disease.