Background/Purpose: Sensorineural hearing loss has been reported to be increased in several chronic autoimmune and non-autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), progressive systemic sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, small vessel vasculitides, ankylosing spondylitis and Behçet’s syndrome. We had sporadically noted several degrees of sensorineural hearing loss among our Takayasu’s arteritis (TA) patients. While, some revealed this in their past history, others had relapsing attacks of hearing loss independent of or associated with vascular relapses. We formally investigated the frequency and type of hearing loss among TA patients and suitable controls.  

Methods: The study was done in two parts. In the first part, consecutive TA and SLE patients seen at outpatient clinic along with apparently healthy controls were administered a standardized questionnaire that assessed hearing loss, tinnitus and episodic vertigo. In the second part previously registered TA and SLE patients for another study (1-2), were called to specifically for otological examination and audiometry tests that included pure-tone air and bone   conduction, speech audiometry and acoustic reflex threshold test.

Results: In the first part, 73 patients with TA, 107 patients with SLE and 133 healthy controls were studied as shown in Table 1. The frequency of those with hearing deficit/loss, tinnitus and vertigo were significantly more common among both TA and SLE patients (Table 1). While the frequency of those with hearing deficit/loss was similar in TA and SLE, those with tinnitus and vertigo were significantly most common in TA.

Audiometry tests revealed that, several degrees of hearing loss were present in 36.6 % of the patients with TA and 25.0 % of the patients with SLE (Table 2). This was mostly due to sensorineural hearing loss in both groups (TA: 31.7 %; SLE: 20.0 %) and high –frequency type was the most common pattern. Moreover, those TA patients with sensorineural hearing loss did not show any specific vascular pattern.

Conclusion: We are unaware of previous surveys of sensorineural hearing loss in TA. Our study shows that audiovestibular system is considerably affected in TA, similar to that observed in SLE. The fact that there was no clear vascular pattern among patients with hearing loss, suggest that small vessel vasculitis was probably the cause of this hearing loss.