ABSTRACT
The introduction of the contraceptive pill into the sphere of otorhinolaryngology would appear to lie with M. Schiff. In his original article, Schiff emphasized that his findings were based more on clinical experience than on statistically proven epidemiological studies. Thromboembolic complications of the inner ear were also described by H. A. Kley and H. J. Opitz in women using the pill where an unknown number of 20- and 30-year-old women experienced reversible and sudden attacks of deafness, usually during the first few months of oral contraceptive use. The use of more sophisticated psychoacoustical techniques to probe auditory function has revealed certain subtle changes in audiological parameters in women using the contraceptive pill and those receiving hormonal therapy. T. Rahko et al. showed that in 93 patients the use of a filtered speech test revealed that 13% of this population had pathological values with this finding possibly associated with a central gnostic hearing lesion.
