Introduction and objectives:

Cisplatin is one of the drugs with greater ototoxicity within clinical use. Hearing loss detection and therapeutic measures can be done in early stages by controlling the auditory thresholds of patients on treatment. With this paper we intend to assess the incidence and severity of hearing loss by cisplatin in our environment, identifying major risk factors.

Methods:

The case study was conducted on a third level hospital by monitoring and recording the hearing loss by cisplatin among the first 100 patients who accepted the audiologic monitoring. Those patients were sent by the oncology department. Then a high frequency audiometry and the otoacoustic emissions was carried out on the patients to evaluate them.

Results:

Essentially, we refer to a group which us made up of adults with an average age of 59 years old. Out of the 70 patients treated only with cisplatin, 27% experienced hearing loss. Among the remaining 30 patients who received radiotherapy in addition to cisplatin, hearing impairment at 53% was detected. Cisplatin ototoxic effects are dose-dependent and more intense with normal hearing. In our results, gender, age or the presence of previous hearing loss, were not statistically significant factors in vulnerability.

Conclusions:

the susceptibility variable to ototoxic damage on patients, the clinically insidious onset of hearing loss and its irreversibility, justify the need to monitor the cisplatin ototoxicity. Clinical data allow us to calculate the risk of an average population, although it does not help to predict what will happen to each patient.

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