Cochrane corner: platinum-induced hearing loss after treatment for childhood cancer

This Cochrane Corner features the review entitled “Platinum-induced hearing loss after treatment for childhood cancer” published in 2016. In their review, van As et al. identified 13 cohort studies including 2837 participants with a hearing test after treatment with a platinum-based therapy for different types of childhood cancers. All studies had problems related to quality of the evidence. The reported frequency of hearing loss varied between 1.7% and 90.1% for studies that included a definition of hearing loss; none of the studies provided data on tinnitus. Only two studies evaluated possible risk factors. One study found a higher risk of hearing loss in people treated with the combination of cisplatin plus carboplatin compared to treatment with cisplatin only and for exposure to aminoglycosides. The other found that age at treatment (lower risk in older children) and single maximum cisplatin dose (higher risk with an increasing dose) were significant predictors for hearing loss, while gender was not. This systematic review shows that children treated with platinum analogues are at risk of developing hearing loss, but the exact prevalence and risk factors remain unclear.