[ad_1]
- A UK man with asthma was hospitalized for more than 30 days with a COVID-19 infection. While intubated, he also developed pneumonia, anemia, and hypertension.
- Once the doctors removed the man from his ventilator, his hearing deteriorated, a problem he had never experienced before.
- They gave him steroids to treat the hearing loss and it improved slightly, but it still remained.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
An otherwise healthy 45-year-old man in the UK lost his hearing after having COVID-19, making him the first reported case of such an instance in the country, according to a new case study in BMJ Case. Reports.
The man, whose only underlying condition was asthma, experienced sudden-onset sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) or mild to severe hearing loss over a period of three days due to damage to the inner ear.
According to the doctors who wrote the case report, only five other cases of permanent hearing loss related to COVID-19 have been reported, and this was the first case in the UK.
The man was hospitalized for more than 30 days due to COVID-19
After having symptoms of COVID-19 for 10 days, including shortness of breath, the man went to the hospital where he was admitted to the intensive care unit and put on a ventilator.
He stayed on the ventilator for 30 days, the doctors wrote, and during that time he developed pneumonia, blood clots in the lungs, hypertension and anemia.
Doctors gave him remdesivir, steroids, and plasma to treat him and he began to feel better. But a week after he stopped using the ventilator, the man noticed that he couldn’t hear most of the sounds in both ears, something he had never experienced before.
The man told doctors that he had never had hearing problems before, and when doctors checked his ears, they saw no signs of inflammation or infection.
Still, after completing the hearing tests, they found that the man had mild hearing loss.
They gave the man steroids for seven days. Subsequently, his hearing improved at certain frequencies, but he did not fully recover.
Although doctors can’t say for sure whether the coronavirus caused the man’s permanent hearing loss, they thought it could be related.
Doctors suggested that medical professionals test early for hearing loss in COVID-19 patients to “avoid missing the treatment window.”
