Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: There is a connection between neurosensorial hearing loss and tipe 2 diabetes. Diabetes is a systemic chronic disease that affects the vessels and nerves. There are 415 million people all over the world that suffer from diabetes. There is not a clear mechanism of how diabetes is related to hearing loss but it s possible that the high blood glucose levels associated with diabetes cause damage to the small blood vessels in the inner ear, similar to the way in wich diabetes can damage the eyes and the kidneys.

Aim: The role of tipe 2 diabetes in neurosensorial hearing loss in patient without any other systemic disease like HTA and without any other risk of hearing loss like loud noise proffesions, genetics, asthma and other chronic diseases of the middle ear: chronic otitis media, otosclerosis. Obtaining a normal glucose level in diabetic patients (HbA1C<7%) prevents early RNS hearing loss.

Method and patients: We have taken in our study 2 groups: one group of 100 patients with tipe 2 diabetes without any other systemic diseases and the other is the control group of 100 healthy people from 45–65 years old, from 2015–2017. We performed: blood count cells, biochemical balance, HbA1c, urine test from the endocrinologist and otoscopy, audiometry, tympanometry from the ent doctor

Results: The average of HbA1C was 9.2%. Some of them had other diabetic complications such as diabetic nephropathy, retinopathy and neuropathy. We found normal otoscopy and tympanometry, bilateral RNS hearing in the higher tones in 60 patients, in wich in those with higher HbA1C with grave RNS hearing loss and in the others with medial RNS hearing loss.

Conclusions: There is a strong connection between poor control diabetes and RNS hearing loss. In those with grave RNS hearing loss it was irreversible and needed acoustic prosthesis. We recommended good control of diabetes and performe an audiograme in every patient detected with diabetes.