Meniere's Disease in Children

Abstract

The typical Meniere's disease is rarely seen in children and it is hard to find the related reports. In general, the frequency of Meniere's disease in children is only 0.4-7.0% of that of adults. In this paper. We report three cases of Meniere's disease in children less than 15 years old that we experienced during 9 years. The three cases are 14 and 13-year-old boys and a 10-year-old girl. Two of three cases initially complained of only recurrent bouts of vertigo without any tinnitus, ear fullness, and hearing impairment. And, the early pure tone audiograms showed only high tone frequency loss regardless of complaining hearing loss in all three cases and the decrease of the hearing threshold was observed 1-8 years after the dizziness attacks started. They were usually decreased to a level of mild or moderate hearing impairment. After diuretic treatment, vertigo was generally well controlled, and some cases showed improvement in hearing. At our department, the incidence of children with Meniere's disease compared with total number of patients with Meniere's disease for 9 years is 2.6%(3/114), and the incidence of Meniere's disease in children with vertigo is 2.0%(3/147).