Abstract

Background: Diabetes is fast gaining the status of a potential epidemic in India with more than 62 million diabetic individuals currently diagnosed with the disease. Conventional audiometric tests are not sensitive to detect the initial phase of sensory loss. A comparative study of Hearing evaluation of paediatric patients with IDDM between 6-17 yr and age and sex matched controls was done for evaluating the correlation between presence of type1 DM and auditory dysfunction, glycemic control and effect of duration of disease on hearing loss in IDDM conducted in Department of ENT in Rajindra hospital, Patiala.
Materials & methods: The present cross sectional observational study included 50 patients between age group of 6-17 years with confirmed diagnosis of Type 1 DM and an average disease duration of more than 1 year and 50 age and sex matched healthy controls. The patients were diagnosed as diabetic as per diagnostic criteria of The American Diabetes Association. The onset of diabetes was noted on the day of commencement of insulin therapy. A Performa was made where data recorded will include age, sex, duration of diabetes, insulin dose, BMI, frequency of acute complications like diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), and severe hypoglycemia. This was followed by audiological testing, which will include pure tone audiometry (PTA) and Otoacoustic emission (OAE). Audiological assessment was done in a sound proof room in out - patient clinic of ENT Department, Rajindra hospital, Patiala. Hearing thresholds were tested using a commercially available AL Advanced digital audiometer AD21OOPS with headphones for speech frequencies and higher frequencies audiometry. The limitof normality was defined as a maximum intensity of 25 decibels for all frequencies.classic symptoms of hyperglycemia or hyperglycemic crisis.
Results: High frequency hearing loss was found to be present in 8 percent of the patients (4 patients) of the study group while it was absent in control group. While correlating the occurrence of high frequency SNHL with age-wise and gender-wise distribution of patients in the study group, non-significant results were obtained.While correlating the occurrence of high frequency SNHL with duration of diabetes in the study group, non-significant results were obtained. Significant results were obtained while comparing the mean RBS levels and HbA1c levels among the patients with and without high frequency SNHL.
Conclusion: Early detection is important in affected children and a range of intervention options (such as remotemicrophone listening systems) are available, and have proven beneficial in ameliorating the real-world listening effects of auditory neuropathy.