I'm wondering about the mechanisms by which the treatment methods, microsurgery or radiation, might differ or be the same for resulting hearing loss.
My current understanding is that, when microsurgery is used to try to preserve hearing, the blood supply to the cochlea can still be damaged or interrupted during the procedure, and the result may be total hearing loss on the affected side.
Alternatively, radiosurgery, such as the gamma knife, might lead to hearing loss as a consequence of the radiation that the cochlea receives in collateral exposure to the target area, and that this might then occur as either a gradient or in total.
Does this seem accurate? Does anyone know if indeed one kind of loss might tend to be more of a gradient or total than the other?
Can traditional hearing aids compensate for either of these kinds of loss, if the loss is a reduction or gradient event rather than complete?
