Souvagini Acharya, Deepakraj Venkatesan, Shraddha Laxmidhar Mohanty, Prachi Mohapatra
BACKGROUND Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is an immune mediated chronic intestinal disease. It is of two major types, Ulcerative Colitis (UC) and Crohn’s Disease (CD). Though IBD is primarily an intestinal disease, it involves various organ systems such as eyes, skin, musculoskeletal and hepatobiliary systems. Sensorineural hearing loss is one of such extraintestinal manifestations which is attributed to the autoimmune inner ear disease. The objective of this study is to find the prevalence of sensorineural hearing loss in patients of inflammatory bowel disease. MATERIALS AND METHODS 28 patients presenting to ENT and Medicine OPD of VIMSAR, Burla, from September 2016 to August 2018, clinically diagnosed to have Inflammatory Bowel Disease were selected for the study. The patients were compared with equal number of age and gender matched controls (n=28). All the patients were subjected to thorough clinical examination along with otoscopy, tympanometry and pure tone audiometric tests. All cases and controls had normal otoscopy and tympanometry findings, thus excluding conductive hearing loss. The data was tabulated in Excel sheets and statistical analysis was done by Student’s ‘t’ Test. Statistical significance was set at p value <0.05. RESULTS A total of 56 patients were included in the study (28 cases and 28 age and gender matched controls). 57% of the cases were females and 43% of the cases were males. Mean age of the study was 35 years. There was significant difference between the cases and controls in terms of sensorineural hearing loss (p<0.002). Of the total 28 patients of IBD (20 cases of Ulcerative Colitis and 8 cases of Crohn’s disease), 17 patients had documented SNHL, 14 of them were bilateral and 3 were unilateral. 11 patients (7 cases of UC and 4 cases of CD) had no hearing loss. SNHL was present in all frequencies but mainly affecting the higher frequencies 2 KHz, 4 KHz and 8 KHz. CONCLUSION Inflammatory bowel disease is a treatable cause of otherwise permanent sensorineural deafness. Almost 60% of cases present with documented sensorineural hearing loss. Early audiometric evaluation may be advised in all inflammatory bowel disease patients.
