The Validiation of the audiological results in diabetes mellitus patients

SUMMARY In this research, audiological evaluation of two groups were performed: patients with Diabetes Mellitus (D.M.) and nondiabetic subjects with normal hearing. Furthermore, patients with D.M.were analysed in term of their age, duration of disease and the complications. D.M. group was comprised of 101 patients, and the normal group was comprised of 108 subjects. Using pure tone audiometry, high frequency audiometry and speech discrimination scores (SDS), two groups were compared to each other. Patients with Type I D.M., who were between 1 1 and 20 years old, had hearing thresholds not significantly different from those of subjects with normal hearing in the same age group up to 6000 Hz and in terms of SDS (p> 0.05). However, thresholds of this patient group were significantly different from the normal hearing group in between 8.000 and 16.000 Hz frequencies (p< 0.05). In Type II D.M. group, who were in the age range of 31 and 40 years, only the thresholds in between 4 and 6 kHz, as well as SDS were different from those of subjects with normal hearing in the same age range. (p< 0.05). When Type II D.M. group in the age range of 41 and 60 years were compared to those of subjects with normal hearing, all thresholds obtained from 250 Hz up to 16 kHz as well as SDS, were significantly different. (p< 0.05). However, none of the hearing parameters obtained from 61 to 80 years old patients were found to be different from those of same age range of normals (p>0.05). When the hearing parameters obtained from patients with D.M. were also analysed in terms of the duration of the disease, the way of the treatment and the presence of neuropathy complication, these factors were found to be significantly correlated with the hearing loss (p< 0.05). Furthermore, when the patients grouped into depending on the presence of hypertension, hypercholesterolemia and macroangiopathy complication and these two groups were compared to each other, these factors were found to be correlated with the hearing loss (p< 0.05). However, the hearing loss in patients were not found to be correlated with nephropathy and retinopathy. Key words: Diabetes Mellitus, Hearing Loss, Speech Discrimination Score, Pure Tone Audiometry, High Frequency Audiometry.