Speech perception performance of subjects with type I diabetes mellitus in noise

Abstract Introduction: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a chronic metabolic disorder of various origins that occurs when the pancreas fails to produce insulin in sufficient quantities or when the organism fails to respond to this hormone in an efficient manner. Objective: To evaluate the speech recognition in subjects with type I diabetes mellitus (DMI) in quiet and in competitive noise. Methods: It was a descriptive, observational and cross-section study. We included 40 participants of both genders aged 18-30 years, divided into a control group (CG) of 20 healthy subjects with no complaints or auditory changes, paired for age and gender with the study group, consisting of 20 subjects with a diagnosis of DMI. First, we applied basic audiological evaluations (pure tone audiometry, speech audiometry and immittance audiometry) for all subjects; after these evaluations, we applied Sentence Recognition Threshold in Quiet (SRTQ) and Sentence Recognition Threshold in Noise (SRTN) in free field, using the List of Sentences in Portuguese test. Results: All subjects showed normal bilateral pure tone threshold, compatible speech audiometry and "A" tympanometry curve. Group comparison revealed a statistically significant difference for SRTQ (p = 0.0001), SRTN (p < 0.0001) and the signal-to-noise ratio (p < 0.0001). Conclusion: The performance of DMI subjects in SRTQ and SRTN was worse compared to the subjects without diabetes.