Medical Breakthroughs: MicroWick

01:04 PM EST on Tuesday, January 4, 2005

Kevin Hart is all smiles now. He wasn't so happy recently when, out of the blue, he suddenly lost the hearing in his right ear.

"It occurred in a blink of an eye,” he says.

He was suffering from sudden sensoineural (sensory-neural) hearing loss. Something was destroying his cochlea - the snail-shaped organ in the inner ear.

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"I could hear a buzzing sound. I could feel pressure, much like you might feel in an unpressurized airplane."

"It's one of the few emergencies in otology. The people who have this should be seen immediately, as soon as possible,” says otolaryngologist Dr. Sam Marzo.

The cause is often a mystery. Quick treatment with oral steroids sometimes helps restore hearing.

"If the hearing has not improved, then there's some studies now suggesting a benefit to giving steroids directly to the inner ear," says Dr. Marzo.

But how? Because eardrops alone can't get past the eardrum, doctors turned to the MicroWick.

The tiny sponge absorbs steroid drops from the ear canal and draws the medicine through to the inner ear.

"The patients put the drops in themselves. So, that's the beauty of it," says Dr. Marzo.

Kevin says he noticed an improvement within a week to 10 days of starting the treatment.

"We continued the protocol for another couple weeks and I moved up to about 35% improvement."

And considering the alternative, that is something to smile about.

Web story produced by Jay Ditzer.