Avaliação audiológica de pacientes com doença falciforme

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to evaluate the prevalence of hearing loss in patients diagnosed with sickle cell disease (SCD) followed-up at the Hematology Outpatient Clinic of Conjunto Hospitalar de Sorocaba , Brazil, and to correlate the findings with the type of hemoglobinopathy. Methods: The study included 19 patients diagnosed with SCD, 68% of whom were SS, 16% SC, and 16% S-β-thalassemia. The evaluation of each patient comprised a directed anamnesis, otorhinolaryngological physical examination, and audiological evaluation with pure tone audiometry (PTA) and immittanciometry. 37% of the patients had some alteration in PTA and the mean of the thresholds showed a tendency to be higher in the high frequencies. Results: We found one patient (5%) with mild to moderate hearing loss bilaterally and six patients (32%) with thresholds >25 dB at frequencies of 250, 6,000 or 8,000 Hz in one or both ears. We did not observe alterations in the Speech Recognition Index (SRI) in any patient and immittanciometry showed a Type A curve in 100% of the ears evaluated. The relation between the type of hemoglobinopathy and the presence or absence of hearing loss was not significant. Conclusion: As described in the literature, we observed the presence of sensorineural hearing loss in high frequencies in patients with SCD and therefore it is concluded that the audiological monitoring of these patients is extremely important.