The prevalence of sensorineural hearing loss in patients with Kawasaki disease after treatment

Kawasaki disease (KD) is an acute childhood febrile illness with world­wide incidence and the highest incidence occurs in Asian children, with coronary arteritis being the main complication. Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) has also been described as a comp­lication of KD in several articles. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of SNHL in patients with KD treated with intra vein immunoglobellin (IVIG).
In this cross sectional study, we eval­uated 56 patients who received KD treatment between 2011 and 2015 by auditory brainstem evoked response (ABR), pure tone audiometry (PTA), and tympanometry. Also, we evaluated the prevalence of coronary arteritis, the time of beginning IVIG treatment from the onset of fever, the prevalence of thrombocytosis, and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) in acute or subacute phases of their disease.
During audiological evaluation, we found SNHL in one (2.6%) of the 36 patients. Other findings in the acute and subacute phases of KD included: 8 patients (22%) had coronary aneurysm, 17 (47%) thrombocytosis, 25 (69%) had elevated ESR, and the treatment with IVIG within 10 days of fever was done in 19 patients (53%).
SNHL is a complication of KD which could extend beyond the treatment time. In this study, the patient with SNHL was treated with KD two years before the study and in the acute phase of KD, he had thrombocytosis > 500,0000, ccoronary artery aneurysm, ESR > 40. The treatment with IVIG was done within the first 10 days of fever onset.