Audiological profile of patients treated for childhood cancer

Abstract

The auditory feature found after the cancer treatment was a symmetrical bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. Chemotherapy with cisplatin proved to be a risk factor, while head and neck radiotherapy was not critical for the occurrence of hearing loss.

Effects of chemotherapy on the auditory system of children with cancer: a systematic literature review

“…One of the studies analyzed in this review observed that 26% of the individuals presented high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss, whose appearance began from one to 60 months after the end of the chemotherapy, regardless of individual or cumulative doses of cisplatin 20 . Another three studies also verified percentages of alterations ranging from 24 to 100%, from 6 to 44 months after, the main hearing loss being the sensorineural, bilateral and symmetric 22,23,[25][26][27] .…”

“…Considering that the aim of this research was to verify the effects of cisplatin and carboplatin chemotherapy on the auditory system of children and/or adolescents with cancer, the selected studies tended to be longitudinal, assessing the individuals before, during and/or after chemotherapy; the follow-up after chemotherapy ranged from one month to 127 months. Only five studies performed the assessment exclusively post-chemotherapy treatment 4,22,27,29,36 .…”

“…Among the studies, different methods were employed to compose the audiological assessment. Since a wide age range was involved in the assessment, sometimes including very small children, the auditory the other hand, ten studies did not specify the criterion used to classify hearing loss and/or presence of ototoxicity 20,22,23,[27][28][29][30][31][32]36 .…”

“…The acoustic immittance, though used in many of the studies 12,20,24,27,28,31,35 , was carried out mainly with the purpose of discarding possible middle ear alterations that could compromise the results of the other procedures, especially those of the otoacoustic emissions (OAE).…”

“…Concerning the drug used in chemotherapy treatment, nine studies (39.13%) assessed the effect of cisplatin alone 12,[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] , with doses ranging from 50 to 160 mg/m 2 per cycle (cycles between 1 and 6); five studies (21.74%) assessed carboplatin alone [28][29][30][31][32] , with doses ranging from 322 to 2,210 mg/m 2 per cycle (cycles between 1 and 9); and, nine studies (39.13%) assessed the effects of cisplatin and/or carboplatin 4,8,[33][34][35][36][37][38][39] . Of the studies with cisplatin and/or carboplatin, the majority does not mention the number of cycles and/or the doses of each drug per cycle; the total cumulative dose of cisplatin ranged from 20 to 1,000 mg/m 2 , whereas that of carboplatin ranged from 104 to 15,550 mg/m 2 .…”