[Possible involvement of the auditory system in rheumatoid arthritis]

32 patients with definite or classical rheumatoid artritis, aged between 22 and 60 years, were checked with respect to clinical aspects, laboratory data and pure-tone audiometry. None of them had received salicylates in former times or at the time of this study. The audiometric results in the arthritis patients did not differ from those in comparison with the results of a random sample study of clinically normal ears. Ototoxic salicylate therapy may have influenced earlier results about hearing loss in rheumatoid arthritis.