Association of Acute Myocardial Infarction with Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss: A Population-Based Case-Control Study

Objective: Although the etiology of sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) remains unknown, there is increasing evidence suggesting an underlying cardiovascular pathomechanism. This study set out to explore a possible association between acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and having previously been diagnosed with SSNHL by using a population-based dataset with a case-control design. Methods: In this study, we utilized administrative claims data from the Taiwan National Health Insurance program to identify 48,674 cases with AMI and to randomly select 243,370 controls. Conditional logistic regression was used to explore the association between AMI and having previously been diagnosed with SSNHL. Results: Of the sampled patients, 1,313 (0.4%) had been diagnosed with SSNHL within 5 years before the index date; 340 (0.75% of the cases) were from the cases and 974 (0.4% of controls) were from the controls. After adjusting for patient geographic region, monthly income, hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and coronary heart disease, conditional logistic regression analysis (conditioned on sex, age group, urbanization level, and index date) revealed that the odds ratio for prior SSNHL in patients with AMI was 1.50 (95% CI 1.30-1.70; p < 0.001) that of controls. We found that the adjusted odds ratio of prior hospitalization for the treatment of SSNHL for cases was 2.11 (95% CI 1.65-2.69; p < 0.001) times that of controls. Conclusions: This study identified a novel association between AMI and prior SSNHL. The results of this study highlight a need for clinicians dealing with SSNHL patients to be alert to their risk of subsequent AMI. Copyright (c) 2012 S. Karger AG, Basel