Hearing Loss and the Affecting Factors in Patients with Fibromyalgia

To find the frequency of hearing loss in newly diagnosed patients with fibromyalgia (FM), and the factors affecting it.

Descriptive study. Place and Duration of the Study: Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Department of Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Istanbul Medeniyet University, Goztepe Prof. Dr. Suleyman Yalcin City Hospital, Turkey, from March 2021 to November 2022.

Patients with FM and gender/age matched controls were compared with pure-tone audiometric (PTA), and transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOE) tests after standardised otorhinolaryngologic assessment The subjects were questioned for NSAID uptake and scored with ASAS-NSAID score.

There were 33 patients with FM and 32 healthy volunteers. Subjective tinnitus, dizziness, and hearing loss rate in the FM group were 12%, 18%, and 15%, respectively. PTA air and bone conduction studies yielded significant differences between the control and FM group (p<0.05). The statistical difference was pronounced in higher frequencies. TEOE tests showed the FM group had significantly lower scores when compared to the control group at 3000 Hz and 4000 Hz (p<0.05). The median ASAS-NSAID scores were 0 for the control group and 7.78 for the FM group (p <0.001).

Patients with FM had high rate of audiometric hearing loss of the sensorineural type. The abnormalities were more prominent in the high frequencies but also present in the low frequencies.

Fibromyalgia syndrome, Hearing loss, Audiometry, Ototoxicity, Central sensitisation.