Audiometric Findings in Adolescent Sickle Anemia Patients in Port Harcourt

Background: Sickle Cell disease (SCD) is a hereditary disease of the erythrocyte in which the propensity to form rigid sickle morphology is increased.Hearing loss is one of the central nervous system complications of sickle cell disease.Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the proportion of adolescent SCD patients with hearing loss in Port Harcourt, Objective: To determine the severity of hearing loss among SCD patients and to determine socio -demographic factors related to SCD patients with hearing loss.Methodology: This is a comparative cross sectional study of 60 adolescent SCD patients and 60 age and gender matched HbAA controls.Otoscopy, tympanometry and pure tone audiometry were done on these patients.Results: Among 60 adolescent SCD patients aged 10-19 years, 4(6.7%) had sensorineural hearing loss whereas 1(1.7%) of age and gender matched HbAA controls had sensorineural hearing loss.All cases of hearing loss were mild in severity.The mean hearing threshold was higher in the SCD patients than control for most frequencies tested.Conclusion: Most of the adolescent sickle cell patients had normal hearing.Neither age nor gender was found to have correlation with hearing loss among the SCD patients.Mean hearing threshold was higher for the sickle cell patients than control.