Hearing Complaints and Audiometric Findings in Post-covid-19 Patients - A Preliminary Study

Introduction: COVID-19 originates from the infection of the new severe acute respiratory syndrome, coronavirus 2, which spread rapidly around the world, until, in March 2020, it was classified as a pandemic.The classic symptoms are fever, dry cough and shortness of breath, but other associated symptoms such as anosmia, dysgeusia and others may appear.Studies and case reports have been investigating the possibility that COVID-19 also causes hearing loss.Because it is a viral infection, it can damage structures of the inner ear, causing hearing loss.The aim of this study is to identify hearing complaints and correlate them with possible changes in pure tone audiometry in patients infected with COVID-19.Methods: This is a clinical, observational, cross-sectional and descriptive study.Men and women aged between 18 and 59 years old who were positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection participated in the research, including those who contracted the disease, even without diagnostic confirmation.The anamnesis was answered in person and/or through an electronic form on Google Forms.Bilateral otoscopy, pure tone audiometry by air and bone conduction, vocal audiometry and discomfort threshold investigation were performed.Conclusion: Hearing complaints are present in individuals infected by COVID-19, however the sample of individuals who underwent the audiometric examination was small, and it was not possible to correlate hearing complaints with audiometric alterations.Results: The sample consisted of 70 participants, of which 11 underwent audiometric tests.The auditory symptoms most reported by the 70 participants were, respectively: sensation of plugged ear, dizziness, hyperacusis, vertigo and difficulty in understanding speech.Of the 11 participants who underwent audiometric tests, all of them had hearing within normal limits and only 1 patient had an alteration in the Speech Recognition Percentage Index.Regarding the results of the discomfort threshold test, 7 patients presented mild to moderate alterations.