Is Ménière’s disease treatable?

  Meniere’s disease, also known as Meniere’s syndrome, is a disease of the inner ear that is characterized by vertigo, deafness, tinnitus and a feeling of stuffiness in the ear. The disease is more prevalent in middle-aged people, with no significant gender differences. The symptoms of Ménière’s disease vary from person to person, but the main characteristics of the attacks are: they are sudden and can occur at any time, even after falling asleep, and can last more than ten or twenty minutes. The main characteristics of vertigo during an attack are: when the patient opens his eyes, he feels that the house or surrounding objects are turning, and when he closes his eyes, he feels that his body is spinning. Most patients lie still with their eyes closed and do not dare to turn their head or body if they open their eyes or turn their head. Most patients have a series of symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, pallor and sweating. Most patients experience unilateral deafness and tinnitus with or without deafness during an attack, while a few patients have tinnitus or deafness before the attack that worsens after the attack. Episodes of Ménière’s disease can cause great distress to the patient’s life and psychological well-being. Due to the fear of unscheduled attacks, patients often dare not go out to activities, and the scope of life will be reduced. Normal activities such as walking, crossing the road, traveling and hiking become dangerous activities due to the fear of sudden attacks of Meniere’s syndrome, which seriously affects the quality of life. Therefore, correct diagnosis and effective treatment are crucial for patients.  Due to the lack of knowledge about this disease, patients often prefer to visit the emergency department or neurology department when they have a dizziness attack. However, doctors often consider diseases such as “cerebral ischemia” and administer fluids, but fail to provide targeted treatment. Therefore, when dizziness is accompanied by deafness and tinnitus, patients should seek treatment from otorhinolaryngology in a timely manner.  The diagnosis of Ménière’s disease depends mainly on a thorough medical history, together with audiological, vestibular function and imaging examinations. Therefore, when you visit the ENT department for vertigo and symptoms such as deafness and tinnitus, do not just present vertigo to the doctor in a general way, but describe in detail the cause, duration and frequency of vertigo attacks and whether there is tinnitus and hearing loss during vertigo attacks, so as to provide the doctor with as many clues as possible for the diagnosis. In recent years, our hospital has adopted the internationally advanced MRI inner otography technology, which can diagnose Ménière’s disease more objectively, bringing a boon to the majority of patients.  There is no specific treatment or prevention method for Ménière’s disease, and about 80% of patients are able to relieve symptoms and control the disease through medication. However, there are a few patients with poor results after medication, recurrent attacks of vertigo and gradual hearing loss, so treatment should be chosen according to the patient’s vertigo condition and hearing level.  In the early stage of Ménière’s disease, the attacks of Ménière’s disease can be controlled and reduced by vertigo control treatment in the attack period and maintenance treatment in the interval period. The vertigo control during the attack period can be done with drugs such as Valium, vertigo stop, vitamins and Mineralon, while the maintenance treatment during the interval period includes physical exercise, appropriate work and rest, and low salt diet. Oral hormones are effective for Meniere’s disease with mild symptoms. If you are worried that taking hormones may cause side effects, or if you have hypertension, diabetes, or gastroduodenal ulcer and cannot use hormones systemically, you can make tympanic membrane puncture for intra-dural hormones. Injections are given twice a week for three weeks. The goal of intra-implantation therapy is to maximize the effect of local medication on the inner ear without causing systemic side effects.  If the vertigo caused by Ménière’s disease is not controlled by the above treatment and there is hearing loss, intra-dural administration of gentamicin, a method known as chemical vagotomy, may be used. However, this method has the risk of causing continued hearing loss. Currently, the commonly used method is titration administration, which controls vertigo and preserves hearing at the same time.  For persistent Ménière’s disease that is ineffective with drug treatment and has frequent attacks, such as frequent vertigo attacks and significant hearing loss, where general drug treatment is ineffective and seriously affects the patient’s work and quality of life, surgery should be considered. Among them, endolymphatic sac surgery is relatively simple and can relieve the vertigo symptoms of some patients, while vestibular neurectomy is the most effective and less damaging among various surgical treatment methods, which can effectively control vertigo, stop hearing loss and improve tinnitus after surgery. At present, the vestibular nerve is exposed and severed by an intra-auricular approach. This procedure has a shorter distance to reach the vestibular nerve, no pressure on the brain tissue, short operation time, less intraoperative bleeding, and low postoperative complications. Labyrinthectomy is indicated for patients without functional hearing or who cannot tolerate intracranial surgery, and the results are similar to those of vestibular neurotomy.  Hearing loss in one or both ears due to Ménière’s disease can also cause great distress in the daily life of patients. Therefore, choosing the right hearing aid is crucial to improve the quality of life of the patient. For patients with high hearing requirements who are deaf in one ear, a bone-anchored hearing aid can be used. It is superior in performance, simple to implant and has provided hearing assistance to over 100,000 patients worldwide to date. For patients who are deaf in both ears, hearing can be regained with unilateral or bilateral cochlear implants, which are now routinely used worldwide to treat severe to total deafness.