We sat on hold yesterday trying to get an answer with CMS in hopes they might have at least some sort of idea of when they might decide to start covering it...the answer was "I'm sorry, we can not tell you when/if that will be happening." 

The good news is that Aetna does cover it.  Maybe that can be of help in our quest to get other insurance companies to follow suite.  I've turned it over to our folks in the contracting department at our hospital.  They deal with the insurance companies on matters like this and hopefully can get us coverage and set up reimbursement.

I hope this information will be of some help to you.  I am so excited by this new indication as this frustrating diagnosis afflicted my mother 2 years ago and she was never able to regain the hearing in her ear again--even with promptly starting the steriods.  It would be so awesome to know that other people would have hope in this situation--as we weren't given much by any of the docs that saw her at the hospital when this happened.  Here's the hyperlink to Aetna's policy.

Best Wishes~ Lisa

http://www.aetna.com/cpb/medical/data/100_199/0172.html

We have treated two people under the new ISSHL protocol, both at 2.5 ATA. They were both paying out of pocket because it was too new for their insurance companies to have added it to their approved list.

Because of that, we treated both 10 times daily --the minimum treatment threshold for the protocol-- and then had them repeat their audiology exam to see if there was any effect. Neither patient had any measurable improvement in their hearing. The first one was 12 days out from symptom onset when he started HBO, but the second one was only a couple of days.

Are we doing them a disservice by having them retest hearing after only 10 treatments, are our inclusion criteria not strict enough or is the favorable response rate for any intervention so poor in ISSHL that we shouldn't let this discourage us? We are contemplating not accepting any other patients until we see follow up guidance from UHMS or other journals.

We just completed the 20th dive on a patient with ISSHL a week ago and I am excited to say that while she did not regain 100% of her hearing back in the affected ear, she did regain partial hearing. 

We were able to get her into our program on day 13 after the initial hearing loss and she stayed on oral steriods the entire time.  The first 9 treatments were at 2.0 ata and when she started getting some response, the doctor continued her for a full 20 treatments at 2.4 ata with a 10 minute air break during each one.

She did not take weekends or holidays off as we couldn't tell by the studies whether that would be a disservice to her or not.  She also has an insurance that I had to get pre-authorization for the treatments, but once I did, they were covered by her insurance (Coventry).

As I get more, I will let you know how it goes.

We started treating her about 7-10 days after hearing loss and we do not treat on the weekends (outpatient facility).