Value of otoacoustic emission in monitoring hearing acuity in chronic renal failure patients.

To evaluate hearing acuity in chronic renal failure (CRF), we studied 48 patients of age less than 40 year as well as 15 years age and sex matched healthy subjects as controls by using the conventional pure-tone audiometry and evoked otoacoustic emission (TEOAE). Twenty-two of the study patients were treated conservatively and 26 patients by regular hemodialysis (HD). The dialyzed patients were further classified according to the duration of HD into 14 patients dialyzed for < 1 year and 12 patients dialyzed for> 1-year. TEOAE was applied only for patients proved to have normal pure tone thresholds. Sensorineural hearing loss was more in CRF patients treated conservatively than in those treated by dialysis (22.7%) and 15.3%, respectively), but the difference was not statistically significant. TEOAE was more sensitive than pure-tone audiometry in detecting sensorineural hearing loss in these patients (27.2% Vs 19.2%, respectively) and in the whole reproducibility of the test. However there were no significant statistical differences in the CRF subgroups and the controls. Furthermore, there was no correlation between TEOAE parameters and serum urea and creatinine. In conclusion, hearing acuity was found to be impaired in chronic renal failure patients whether treated conservatively or hemodialyzed. The transient evoked otoacoustic emission is more sensitive than the conventional pure-tone audiometry for evaluation of hearing acuity in this setting. Although the parameters of TEOAE seem to be better in hemodialyzed than in conservatively treated patients, but it did not reach statistical significance.