Early Detection of Hearing Loss in Adults with Type 2 Diabetes

Diabetes mellitus (DM) leads to dysfunction of various organs such as auditory system. Hearing acuity assessment at conventional pure tone auditomery (PTA) frequencies showed variable results in diabetic patients, and has not enough sensitivity for detection of early phases of hearing loss in these cases. This study aims at establishing high frequency audiometry (HFA) as a useful tool in identifying early onset of hearing loss in individuals with DM.
Subjects and During an analytical cross-sectional study, 30 non-diabetic patients (control group) and 30 individuals with DM type 2 in the age range of 20–50 years were participated. Subjects in both groups underwent conventional PTA (250-8000 Hz), and HFA (10000-16000 Hz).
We found no statistically significant difference in thresholds of PTA and at 250-4000 Hz frequencies between two groups (P>0.05); only at 8000 Hz this difference was meaningful. In the diabetic subjects the thresholds of HFA was significantly increased at 10 to 16 kHz frequencies compared to the thresholds of HFA for normal hearing (P Our findings revealed that regardless of normal hearing sensitivity at conventional audiolometric range, diabetic patients showed bilateral mild hearing loss during HFA assessment. Hence this present study emphasis the clinical utility of HFA for early identification of hearing loss in adults with DM.