Hearing loss and individual susceptibility in recurrent meningitis

ABSTRACT

Bacterial meningitis infection is one of the most common causes of acquired deafness. The purpose of this paper is to study the post-meningitic hearing profile especially in recurrent episodes of meningitis. The study involved 83 subjects just discharged from fever hospital. All patients were submitted to full E.N.T examination, audiological evaluation including pure tone audiometery speech audiometery, immittance-metery and brain stem audiometery, C.S.F analysis for sugar, protein and culture for type of pathogen was done. Pneumococcal meningitis was reported to have recurrent attacks and showed a higher incidence of hearing loss than other causative organisms. The study showed that recurrence of meningitis did not show higher risk of hearing loss. It is suggested that individual susceptibility may be responsible for the recurrence of infection