The inner ear in diabetes mellitus. Histological studies.

Abstract

<h3>Introduction</h3> An appreciable number of clinical studies, especially those from the last decade (Külz,¹in 1899, Edgar,²in 1915, Camisasca,³in 1950, Marullo,⁴in 1950, Vigi,⁵in 1950, and Profazio and Baravelli,⁶in 1959) indicate that diabetes mellitus may give rise to a lesion of the inner ear characterized by a generally slowly progressing bilateral hearing loss of the perceptive type. At times, however, there may be Ménière-like attacks, with sudden onset of hearing loss accompanied by vestibular symptoms (Hegener,⁷in 1908, Lang,⁸in 1913, Benesi and Sommer,⁹in 1929, Root,¹⁰in 1946, Cojazzi,¹¹in 1950, Jørgensen,¹²in 1959, and Jørgensen and Buch,¹³in 1961). The discussion regarding the causes of the inner ear affection in diabetes has been purely hypothetical, there being only a very few and only early reports in the literature on the histology