The effect of one session of hemodialysis on hearing threshold changes in patients with end-stage renal disease

Background and Objective: Renal replacement therapy using dialysis or kidney transplantation increases survival of patients with chronic kidney disease. Hearing loss is an important complication in chronic renal failure and various causes have been mentioned for it. Due to the importance of this issue, we have intended to assess hearing threshold changes in patients with chronic kidney disease during one session of hemodialysis.

Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was enrolled on 76 hemodialysis patients in the hemodialysis ward of Mostafa Khomeini hospital. We performed pure tone audiometry test before and after one session of hemodialysis and 6 months later on patients. All the lab exams were sampled before and immediately after the end of dialysis from the same venous needles as monthly routine lab exam without any additional sampling.

Results: There was a significant hearing threshold improvement after one session of hemodialysis. We found a significant correlation between hearing threshold changes and weight changes, diabetes, dialysis duration and duration of session. But there was not any significant correlation between changes in sodium, potassium, urea and changes in hearing thresholds after hemodialysis.

Conclusion: A significant improvement of hearing threshold at low frequencies after one session of hemodialysis was observed in the patients under 60 years old that supports the hypothesis that there is endolymphatic hydrops in dialysis patients.