PS 17-43 HEARING IMPAIRMENT IN DIABETES

Abstract

Objective: Describe the prevalence of hearing impairment in type 2 diabetes patients and study it correlation with other target organ damage. Design and method: Type 2 diabetic patients younger than 60 y/o with more than 2 years since diabetes diagnosis were included. An audiometric and laboratory test were performed to every patient (hemogram, glycemia, A1C, creatinine, clearence of creatinine by MDRD, proteinuria, lipids). Hearing impairment was defined by audiometric test as a progressive, bilateral sensorineural alteration that predominantly affects high frecuencies (tones ≥ 3000 Herzt) under 25 decibel. HTN was defined when the media of 3 readings was ≥ 140/90 mmHg or the patient was taken antihypertensive medication. The audiometric tests and the funduscopy were done by specialists. Diabetic nephropathy was defined as the presence of proteinuria by urine dipstick with or without a GFR <60 ml/min/m2 by MDRD. Results: One hundred and twelve patients were studied. We included 58 patients for analysis. Mean age was 52,6 ± 7,6 y/o and 8,79 ± 5,3 years since diabetes diagnosis. Only 6 patients had a normal audiometric test. Fifty two patients (89,6%) had an altered audiometric test. From them, 55,1% showed alteration for high frequencies and 34,4% for all the tones (table 1). There were no significant differences when we compared hearing impairment with age, years since diabetes diagnosis, A1C or cholesterol levels, BP, and BMI. There were poor correlation between rethinopathy-nephropathy and hearing impairment. Conclusions: Our study showed that almost 90% of diabetic patients had hearing impairment. Considering microvascular complications, hearing impairment was more frequent than retinopathy or nephropathy and affects quality of life of this population. We can speculated from these findings that hearing impairment in diabetes is a pathology with earlier clinical manifestation comparing with other types of microvascular damage. Further studies are needed to confirm these findings.