YouTube video by Dr. Lera Clone explaining causes, diagnosis, prognosis, and breed predispositions for deafness in dogs. Covers congenital hearing development, ototoxic medication-induced hearing loss (case example “Boogie”), diagnostic approaches (ear exam, skull X‑rays, CT, BAER test, simple in‑clinic sound tests), timelines for recovery, and clinical experience anecdotes.
Questions this video answers
Around 12–14 days of age.
Around 5–8 weeks of age.
Around 3–5 years of age.
Typically 2–3 months, sometimes up to 4 months.
About 12–13 years.
Chapters
Hey, guys, My name is Dr. Lara. Today I'm here with Boogie. And the topic of the video today is going to be deafness in dogs. So if you guys stay tuned, we'll go ahead and talk about what it is, what the causes are, what to kind of expect and some of the different breeds and how to test for it. Thanks for watching and we'll see you in just a few. All right, guys, so Boogie is here today because he's doing a follow up with what the owner perceived as deafness. And so what ended up happening was Boogie has a history of having ear infections in the past, and the owners had some residual medication left at home from a previous ear infection, and they decided to go ahead and use that medication to because it looked like Boogie was starting to have some issues with his ear, which is common. So what ended up happening was when they started using the medication, it wasn't immediately that they noticed that he was having hearing issues. It was actually a few days into the treatment that they noticed that he started having hearing issues. And so they now noticed that he has a lot of difficulty hearing and almost doesn't respond to anything. So just a few things to be aware of. Hearing typically starts to become developed around 12 to 14 days of age and then is usually fully developed around five to eight weeks of age. The most common breeds or the most common breed to have hearing issues are Dalmatians. Some other breeds are Irish Setters. Just to give you the top two breeds that are most commonly seen with hearing issues that they're born with. That being said, some of the more other common causes of hearing loss is using what we call ototoxic medications. So pretty much any ear medication that you use is going to be ototoxic. What does that mean? That if the eardrum is not intact and you put those drops in the dog's ear, it will potentially cause them to go ahead and go deaf, because that stuff can cause a lot of damage to the hearing system. There are also problems with if dogs have chronic ear issues, meaning ear infections, whether they're outer ear infections or middle ear infections, those can cause trauma with all the infection and the inflammation to the hearing apparatus. And so that can lead to that. Then there are some issues in terms of tumors that can cause hearing loss. And then there are also some genetics. Some dogs will lose hearing around 3 to 5 years of age as a result of a certain chromosome that is not normal. Then there are also just older dogs that typically are losing their hearing, and that can be as a result, again of some of the more chronic issues with the ears, as well as the same thing in humans. So if they're constantly exposed to loud sounds, that's something else that could potentially be a result of that. Hey, Bert, do you think you could take boogie just because he's getting a little nervous? If you guys notice, he was trembling a little, starting to tremble a little bit. So I just wanted to make sure that, you know, he is not on stage or, you know, in an area where he's nervous. So we want to make sure that he's. He's okay. Now, that being said, some of the ways to go ahead and diagnose or some of the different tests that we'll do, we'll look in the ear to see if there's any sort of ear infection going on. If there is an ear infection, then we may want to try and treat that. The catch is that we will want to try and visualize or look at the eardrum when we are looking in the ear. The issue with that is that if they have an ear infection, the ear canal is very sensitive. And so therefore, they're not really a fan of us sticking anything in their ear deep enough sometimes to actually see or get a picture of the eardrum. So it may be hard for us to potentially do that without necessarily sedating the pets. So that's something to keep in mind. When your veterinarian is looking in the ear for any sort of ear infection, it may be hard for them to actually visualize the eardrum. The other thing that we may look into doing is doing some X rays of the skull to see if we can see any evidence of fluid building up in the bony parts of the ear. Depending on what that looks like, if we see evidence there, then we'll typically, the next step would be to go ahead and do a CT scan, and that CT scan will go ahead and give us more precise imaging of what exactly is going on and that kind of stuff. Now, if all that's coming back normal or there's no evidence of any sort of issues, then there is something called a bear test. It's spelled B A E R. And that is for stands for brain stem, something evoked response. And so that is something that what they do is they put these electrodes on different parts of the skull, and then they put these headphones over the ear. One ear is going to have white noise going over it. The other ear is typically going to have a clicking, and then they will switch it back and forth to see if the brain signals are being if signals are being sent to the brain that indicate they still have the ability to hear, if they are not able to do that, then that's a clear indication that, you know, the hearing is gone. That being said, one of the most basic tests that I will do is I will have the dog turn or have the owner try and have the dog turn in another direction opposite from me, and I will clang some sort of loud metal, something like that to see if the dog responds. It's important that the dogs are not looking at us or anything like that because then they may just track with their eye to see when something is dropped versus if their head is turned in the opposite direction then, and then they respond, then they do have some level of hearing. With Boogie, and in this particular case he does have, it does appear that is the medication that induced this hearing loss. And the owner is reporting that he is starting to recover some of his hearing. With the dogs who do have ototoxicity as a result of medication, they typically can take anywhere between two to three, maybe sometimes even four months to completely recover. Whatever it is that they're going to recover, sometimes they will not. In my 12 to 13 years of experience, I've seen about three or four different cases of dogs who have gone deaf as a result of ear medications. And of those three or four, two to three of them have recovered partially their hearing. So it is something that if you are experiencing this yourself and it's tied to the ear medication, don't lose hope and don't get super stressed out that it is something that's never going to come back. You still have the opportunity and so does your dog, of enjoying their hearing. If you guys have found this video, please give us a thumbs up. Subscribe and if you know somebody who needs to watch it, please share it with them. Thanks for watching and be safe.
