耳音響放射の臨床応用に関する最近の知見

概要

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Clinical applications of otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) have long been studied since the discovery of this surprising phenomenon by D. T. Kemp in 1978. Although there are at least 4 classes of OAEs, i. e., transiently evoked OAE (EOAE), spontaneous OAE, synchronously evoked OAE and distortion product OAE (DPOAE), most researchers have attempted to evaluate EOAE as a possible measure of cochlear pathology. However, the results only indicate that the EOAE does not provide much information about the fine distribution of cochlear lesions. On the other hand, the measurement of the DPOAE has recently become available as another possible indicator of cochlear function, and has great advantages over EOAE measurement. The results of DPOAE measurement in sensorineural hearing-impaired patients clearly indicate that the DPOAE has excellent frequency specificity. In most cases, the DP-audiogram, a plot of DPOAE level against stimulus frequency, exactly reflects the longitudinally distributed integrity of the cochlear partition. This method may become the most powerful non-invasive tool for the evaluation of cochlear function.
耳鼻咽喉科臨床学会の論文