Cancer treatment in determination of hearing loss.

Introduction: Chemotherapy and radiotherapy in oncology have repercussions in hearing health, and can damage structures of the inner ear. These repercussions usually, result in a bilateral and irreversible hearing loss.
Objective: To identify sensorineural hearing loss cases with complaints of tinnitus and difficulty in speech understanding and investigate their relationship with the types of chemotherapy and radiotherapy the patients received.
Methods: Cross-sectional, clinical, observational, analytical, historical cohort study of 58 subjects treated in a public hospital in the state of Sergipe, diagnosed with neoplasia. The subjects were submitted to anamnesis, conventional pure tone audiometry, and speech recognition threshold.
Results: Of the 116 ears, 25.9% presented sensorioneural hearing loss characterized by changes in high frequencies. There was a positive correlation between hearing loss and the association of chemotherapy and radiotherapy (p=0.035; R=0.196). The auditory complaint analysis shows that most of the subjects had tinnitus and speech understanding difficulty, even with a normal auditory threshold.
Conclusions: Cancer treatment causes hearing loss, associated with the administration of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Cyclophosphamide increased the risk of causing hearing loss. Complaints of tinnitus and speech understanding difficulty were observed.
(Copyright © 2015 Associação Brasileira de Otorrinolaringologia e Cirurgia Cérvico-Facial. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. All rights reserved.)