Complementary acupuncture treatment and reduced risk of sudden sensorineural hearing loss in nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients: a retrospective, nested case–control study

Purpose

Hearing loss is a frequently observed comorbidity in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Accumulating evidence demonstrated that acupuncture can safely manage cancer and its treatment-related symptoms, but its effect in minimizing the likelihood of experiencing sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL) has not been established. So this work aimed to determine the risk of SSHL among NPC persons with or without acupuncture use.

Methods

One population-level, nested case–control design within a cohort study is employed. Relevant information on persons aged 20–80 years who were afflicted with NPC between 2000 and 2010 was extracted from a nationwide health claims database. From them, we identified the cases who had the first SSHL diagnosis occurring after NPC, and all of them were randomly matched to two controls without SSHL. Conditional logistic regression was employed to calculate odds ratios (OR) and its respective 95% confidence intervals (CI) for incident SSHL in relation to acupuncture treatment.

Results

Eight hundred eleven SSHL cases were randomly matched to 1452 controls. Those receiving conventional care plus acupuncture use had a reduced adjusted OR of 0.39 (95% CI, 0.25–0.60) for SSHL. We further discovered that the longer usage of acupuncture remarkably correlated with reduction of SSHL risk in a dose-dependent manner.

Conclusions

Delineation of the benefit from integration of acupuncture into conventional care may be a reference in instituting more appropriate care for NPC subjects.

Implications for Cancer Survivors

Patients living with NPC may benefit from a timely integration of acupuncture into routine care to lessen SSHL risk.

Graphical Abstract