[A case of Behçet's disease with chronic and repeated sudden hearing loss: successful treatment with intravenous cyclophosphamide pulse therapy].

A 54 year-old man who had been diagnosed as Behcet's disease since 1985 was admitted due to sypmtoms of fever, bilateral chronic hearing loss and repeated sudden left deafness after a partial laparoscopic gastrectomy for IIa type of early gastric cancer. Pure-tone audiometry, Bekesy audiometry, speech audiogram and auditory brain stem response revealed sensorineural hearing loss. The findings of magnetic resonance imaging, magnetic resonance angiography, single photon emission computed tomography and positron emission tomography ruled out a central nervous system disorder. The presence of an elevated C-reactive protein level, von Willebrand factor and plasmin alpha 2-plasmin inhibitor complex suggested vasculitis to be involved in the development of hearing loss. Although pulse-dose methylprednisolone therapy effectively arrested the acute progression of hearing loss, repeated audiograms showed that a modest dosage of oral prednisolone failed to maintain such improvement. However, after performing high-dose cyclophosphamide (CY) therapy, a significant improvement in the hearing loss (more than 10 dB) was observed. As a result, CY is thus considered to be a potentially important treatment for sensorioneural hearing loss.