Sudden deafness and conscious short-term hearing loss among an all-age population in China

We used a snowball random sampling method for recruitment. First, we used a highly credible online platform to randomly select students and teachers at Zhejiang Chinese Medicine University as the initial respondents. Then, we relied on eligible respondents for introducing more participants in the second stage of the study, and this cycle of recruitment continued until enrolling enough participants from 31 provinces and cities in China (excluding Hong Kong SAR; Macau SAR, and Taiwan Province). We designed a questionnaire on sudden deafness and conscious short-term hearing loss and randomly distributed it between November 3, 2022, and December 30, 2022. In total, 1584 questionnaires were returned, and 1562 of them were valid. All respondents who participated in this study signed a written consent form. The study complied with the requirements of the Ethics Committee of Zhejiang Chinese Medicine University.