Atrophy of the stria vascularis as a cause of sensorineural hearing loss.

Correlations were made between pure-tone thresholds and computer-aided cross-sectional measurements of the stria vascularis on histological sections of postmortem cochleas from 24 subjects who had reliable audiometric records. The criterion for selection was strial atrophy as the predominant pathological change in 17 experimental ears and normal hearing for seven control ears. Losses in the summed cross-sectional areas of stria vascularis showed a direct correlation with hearing loss. The cause for the strial atrophy is presumed to be a genetically determined predisposition for early cellular decay. The mechanism by which strial atrophy causes hearing loss is speculative.