Monitoring Ototoxicity through Otoacoustic Emissions. Present, COVID-19, and Future Related Insights

The administration of certain drugs is directly related to inner ear damage. Due to the potential of these elements and their usage, more extensive monitoring of adverse effects should be implemented. That is why, baseline evaluation for ototoxicity must be adequately extensive and should embrace conventional PTA thresholds, HFA, immittance measurements, speech audiometry in quiet and in noise, and assessment of OAEs. Health care specialists have reasonably quested other test modalities for ototoxic monitoring, in their effort to eliminate behavioral – subjective testing and even more establishing further improvements in test efficacy. To iterate, drug induced ototoxicities typically are initially presented as OHC dysfunction, and the exact correlation between present OAEs and functional OHCs is fairly well demonstrated. This study provides recent evidence regarding OAEs’ strategic advantages as a part of an ototoxicity monitoring program, as they can detect earlier ototoxic induced thresholds shifts, do not need patient’s own cooperation and are substantially easy to perform and quick. This fact is particularly crucial during present COVID-19 pandemic where ototoxic agents such as chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are routinely administered in many patients who may be too sick and haggard to perform adequately enough in conventional PTA or similar, behavioral based exams.