Infuence of Metabolic Syndrome on Hearing Outcome in Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Background and Objectives Sudden sensorineural hearing loss (S-SNHL) has been reported to be associated with hypertension, diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia, and stroke in previous studies.The purpose of this study was to confrm whether metabolic syndrome (MS) infuences the hearing outcome of S-SNHL in the Korean population. Subjects and MethodWe prospectively investigated the clinical variables of 231 cases of S-SNHL from 2010 March to 2014 February.MS was defned according to the National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III with Asian modifcations.We analyzed and compared the basic and clinical characteristics, the thresholds of pure tone audiometry (PTA), and the hearing outcomes of patients with MS (MS group) and without MS (NMS group).Results There were no signifcant differences in the basic characteristics and initial hearing thresholds between the MS and NMS groups; on the other hand, there were signifcant differences in all of the clinical values of MS between the two groups.The average thresholds of final PTA for the MS and NMS groups were 52.9±30.9dB and 40.5±27.2dB, respectively, with meaningful diversity (p＜0.01).According to Siegel's criteria, the recovery rate of the NMS group (95/159, 59.7%) was signifcantly higher than those of the MS group (29/72, 40.3%).The proportion of recovery within 5 days after starting the treatment was signifcantly higher of the NMS group (37/95, 39.0%) than those of the MS group (4/29, 13.8%) (p＜0.01). ConclusionThe hearing outcome of the NMS group was signifcantly better than those of the MS group.