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Case Reports
. 2021 Dec:113:341-343.
doi: 10.1016/j.ijid.2021.10.025. Epub 2021 Oct 17.

Sudden sensorineural hearing loss after COVID-19 vaccination

Junhui Jeong  1 , Hyun Seung Choi  2
Affiliations
Case Reports

Sudden sensorineural hearing loss after COVID-19 vaccination

Junhui Jeong et al. Int J Infect Dis. 2021 Dec.

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) spread rapidly and was declared a pandemic. In this situation, vaccination for COVID-19 is important and has been prompted in many countries. Rare serious adverse events including Guillain-Barré syndrome, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, and myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccinations have been reported. Otolaryngologic adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination were reported, including several cases of sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL). We report three patients with SSNHL within three days after COVID-19 vaccination and consider an association between them. Although there is no evidence of an association between vaccination and SSNHL, the adverse event of SSNHL after COVID-19 vaccination should be kept in mind because viral infection could be the etiology of SSNHL, which is an otologic emergency that requires prompt treatment with steroids.

Keywords: COVID-19; COVID-19 vaccine; SARS-CoV-2; Sudden sensorineural hearing loss; vaccination; vaccine.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of interests The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Initial hearing threshold with weighted four-frequency average ([500 Hz + 1000 Hz × 2 + 2000 Hz × 2 + 4000 Hz] / 6) on pure tone audiometry after coronavirus disease 2019 vaccination. (A) In a 64-year-old female with right sudden sensorineural hearing loss after the first dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca, it was 86 dB in the right and 17 dB in the left ear. (B) In a 42-year-old male with left acute low-frequency hearing loss after the first dose of Pfizer-BioNTech, it was 13 dB in the right and 9 dB in the left ear, but there was acute hearing loss at low frequencies in the left ear (40, 45, and 30 dB at 125, 250, and 500 Hz, respectively). (C) In an 18-year-old male with right sudden sensorineural hearing loss after the second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech, it was 89 dB in the right and 13 dB in the left ear.
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