Response to “Letter to the Editor” by Kalcioglu et al. “Comparison of pure tone audiometry thresholds and transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAE) of patients with and without Covid-19 pneumonia”

Firstly, Kalcioglu et al. I am pleased for their valuable contribution and interest in our article. With the Covid-19 pandemic, many studies have been conducted on hearing loss. In particular, the first studies have shown that Covid-19 can cause sudden sensorineural hearing loss. In the later organized studies; contradictory results have emerged. Our study, on the other hand, is based on the hypothesis that whether the severity of the disease will increase the degree of hearing loss in patients who have pneumonia in addition to COVID-19 disease. Therefore, patients' pure-tone audiometry (PTA) thresholds and Transient Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions (TEOAE) results were compared at 1 and 3 months.

The first question of the author; what we did was that the Transient Evoked Otoacoustic Emission (TEAOE) test cannot be done with the (Maico-Easyscreen® device (Berlin, Germany)). Although the Maico-Easyscreen® tool (Berlin, Germany) is mostly used for ABR screen in our country, it can also perform TEOAE test successfully when the software module is added. For this reason, TEOAE can be performed in some of the models of Maico-Easyscreen® in Turkey. Information on this subject can be obtained from the distributor company [1]. The software module of the device we use is also loaded to make TEOAE. Therefore, there is no mistake in the model name. The second criticism of the author was that TEOAE amplitude values were not possible and the TEOAE procedure was not clear. In our TEOAE test, we used measurement amplitude averages. TEOAE results were measured at 1000 Hz, 1400 Hz, 2000 Hz, 2800 Hz and 4000 Hz for both the right and left ears and averaged. Signal-to-noise ratios were not used. Our values were consistent with other studies in the literature [2], [3]. The final criticism was about audiometric measurements. Audiometric thresholds were performed using a calibrated Interacoustic Clinical Audiometer AC40 clinical audiometer. Air conduction thresholds were measured for frequencies from 250 to 8000 Hz using Telephonics TDH39P earphones. Bone conduction thresholds were obtained for frequencies from 250 to 4000 Hz using a Radio Ear B71 bone vibrator. Although the author says that 500 to 4000 Hz is sufficient for bone conduction thresholds, there are many studies using different frequency ranges (125 to 8000, 250 to 8000). We planned our study according to other studies in the literature [2], [3]. Likewise, there are studies in which separate measurements are made for both ears, and there are studies in which the average of both ears is taken. I would like to thank the esteemed author for his contribution to our work. Likewise, there are studies in which separate measurements are made for both ears, and there are studies in which the average of both ears is taken. Thank you very much for the valuable author's contributions to our work.

Funding

The authors declared that this study has received no financial support.

Ethics

Ethics committee approval was received from Afyonkarahisar Healty Science University Clinical Research Ethic Committee (11.09.2020-2020/11).

Consent

Consent was obtained from of the patients.

Info

The English translation, editing and proofreading procedures of this article were carried out by “Academic Translation Services (www.tercumeakademik.com)”.

Declaration of competing interest

No conflict of interest was declared by the authors.