Evaluation and Outcomes of Hearing Loss in Temporal Bone Fractures: A Prospective Study

Background Fractures of the skull base occur in 3-30% of head injury presentations to the emergency department. Overall, 9-40% of the cases have temporal bone fractures (TBFs). This fracture may disrupt the intervening structures causing edema, hematoma, bleeding, hearing loss, dizziness, cerebrospinal fluid otorrhea, and facial nerve paralysis. This study aims to evaluate the type of TBF, its correlation with hearing loss, and the outcomes of hearing loss. Methodology A prospective observational study was done among 50 patients who presented to the emergency department following trauma with clinical features and CT of the temporal bone suggestive of TBF. A complete evaluation of the patients was done, and patients were managed as per the departmental protocol. The patients were followed up for six months and monitored for otological symptoms. Periodic assessment of hearing loss by pure tone audiometry (PTA) was performed at the end of one week, one month, and six months. Results The most common type of fracture in our study was longitudinal TBF (72%), followed by transverse TBF (20%) and mixed TBF (8%). According to the newer classification, otic capsule-sparing fracture was more common than otic capsule-violating fracture. Most patients presented with conductive hearing loss (60%) following the TBF. On follow-up, there was a statistically significant improvement in hearing loss at the end of six months. Conclusions Our study found that in most cases hearing loss improved over time. Patients with conductive hearing loss showed maximum improvement in comparison to patients with sensorineural and mixed hearing loss.