Immitance Measurements in Individuals with Meniere's Disease: A Retrospective Study

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in immittance findings between individuals with Meniere’s disease (MD) and those without MD by comparing tympanometric measures between individuals with MD, and individuals with cochlear hearing loss and normal hearing counterparts. A retrospective study design was conducted and the medical records of 282 individuals were reviewed and immittance findings from the case files were tabulated. The between-group comparison and within-group comparison were done using non-parametric statistics for tympanogram type, static acoustic admittance, tympanometric peak pressure, and ear canal volume of all the individuals. The results of this study indicates a significant difference in the tympanometric findings in individuals with MD compared to their normal-hearing counterparts (p < 0.005). However, the results are not significantly different between the two pathological groups (p >0.005). There were no significant difference in the findings of the two subgroups of the MD with and without aural fullness (p >0.05). Therefore, the traditional tympanometric measurements were able to distinguish between MD and normal ears and the results indicate that traditional tympanometry potentially could be a useful as simple non-invasive clinical tools for MD.