Hearing evaluation in patients with chronic renal failure

Abstract Objective To evaluate hearing threshold and the severity of hearing loss at different frequencies in patients with chronic renal failure (CRF), and to analyze the role of duration of disease on hearing threshold in patients of CRF by measuring pure-tone audiometry (PTA) and distortion-product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE). Methods There were analysed 61 subjects (122 ears) from which 12 were patients starting hemodialise (A), 24 subjects were patients undergoing hemodialise over a year (B), 15 subjects were patients undergoing conservative treatment (C) and 10 controls (D). We did hearing evaluation by testing them using tympanometry, PTA and DPOAEs. Other parameters (blood pressure, body weight, blood chemistries) were also evaluated. Results It was found a severe high-frequency hearing loss among patients with CRF comparing to the control group. Duration on haemodialysis treatment does not seem to have a significant impact on the incidence of hearing loss, although the method of treatment may influence the impact of the disease on hearing. Hearing loss among patients with CRF seemed to deteriorate further a year after the first evaluation. Conclusions DPOAE raised the percentages of detection of SNHL indicating that it is a better technique than the conventional PTA for evaluation of hearing acuity.