Abstract General Information

Title

SUDDEN HEARING LOSS AS THE FIRST SIGN OF MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS: AN INTEGRATIVE REVIEW

Abstract

Introduction: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an immune-mediated, demyelinating disease of the nervous system, which may impact the audiovestibular pathway at different stages of the disease. The auditory and vestibular manifestations of MS as a presenting or early symptom are an area in which more investigation is needed. Sudden hearing loss (SHL) is an acutely installed sensorineural hearing loss, which can arise in the course of various diseases, including neurological ones, such as Multiple Sclerosis, as a result of injury to the hearing nerves. Objectives: To assess the evidence for SHL as an early symptom of MS. Methods: This is an integrative literature review, of a qualitative nature. As inclusion criteria were used: A) Publications between the years 2003 and 2023; B) Publications in English, Portuguese and Spanish; C) Articles published in PubMed, Virtual Health Library (VHL) and ScienceDirect databases; D) Articles found through the keywords: “Multiple Sclerosis”, “Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss” and “Early Symptom” combined by the Boolean operator “AND”; E)Works available free of charge and in full. Duplicates and works that did not match the theme were excluded. Finally, 07 articles were selected.
Results:
Conclusion: Studies in recent years corroborate that, although rare, SHL appears mostly as an early sign of MS affecting hearing in all frequencies, associated with changes in auditory tests and predominantly in women. Therefore, it can be an early manifestation of MS and should always be considered in the differential diagnosis of this condition, especially in women.