Hearing Loss and the Heart 
 
Helping Understand Hearing Loss & The Heart
(excerpts for this article from the Harvard University Gazette, March 10, 2005;
www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2005/03.10/01-heart.html) 

Research by Christine Seidman, a professor of medicine at Harvard University begins to explain the connection. Dr. Seidman’s research included two members of a family who suffered progressive hearing loss and then underwent heart transplants. Their hearing loss began early in life. It progressed for at least 10 years before they started to experience shortness of breath, chest pains,and other symptoms of congestive heart failure.    
Convinced that there was a connection to the hearing loss and the cardiovascular disease, Dr. Seidman and her colleagues set out to find the cause. Their studies of family members with the syndrome revealed that they shared a mutation in a gene called eya4. In people with the eya4 mutation, hearing loss starts decades before the symptoms of a failing heart appear. “We could therefore use the hearing loss as a [predictor] for heart disease.”   

  
 
  
Acute Hearing Loss - a warning sign of a stroke?
(excerpts for this article from BlissTree.com, June 29, 2006;
www.blisstree.com/articles/acute-hearing-loss-due-to-narrowing-of-mitral-valve-50)  

A 47-year old woman was hospitalized due to acute hearing loss. Not until about four days after visiting the hospital did she begin to show some signs suggesting cardiovascular disease, shortness of breath, a dry cough, and edema of her face and legs. In the end, she was diagnosed with a blockage in the left middle cerebral artery leading to a stroke. Via echocardiogram, her mitral valve appeared to have significant thickening. An interruption of the blood flow to the inner ear or parts of the brain that control hearing may lead to hearing loss. This may be caused by heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure or diabetes.