Auditory cognitive assessment in post COVID-19 patients: a case control study

There is increasing evidence suggesting that individuals with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) may experience symptoms that persist beyond the initial acute phase commonly referred to as “Long COVID.” Cognitive deficits were among the frequently reported long-lasting symptoms post-COVID-19. Consequently, the study was designed to evaluate cognitive-communicative abilities in post COVID-19 patients focusing on auditory memory and auditory attention and to study the effect of different variables on these abilities in post COVID-19 patients.

Eighty adult subjects were divided equally according to the presence or absence of a history of COVID-19 infection into the study and control group, respectively. All subjects were submitted to thorough history taking, basic audiological evaluation, auditory cognitive psychophysical tests including Auditory Continuous Performance test, Speech Intelligibility in Noise, Recognition memory, Memory for content and for sequence tests, digit span forward and backward tests, and electrophysiological auditory event-related potential (P300).

Post COVID-19 group showed significantly lower scores compared to the control group in all psychophysical auditory cognitive tests for attention and memory and significantly prolonged P300 wave latency and smaller amplitude. None of the variables measured (including duration passed from infection, severity, and number of infection) showed significant relations to test results except a significant negative correlation between the number of infections and memory for sequence results.

Single infection with COVID-19 can have a prolonged impact on auditory cognitive abilities which were not related to the degree of severity of COVID-19. Thus, patients recovered from COVID-19 should receive auditory cognitive evaluations to detect even mild cognitive deficits that can affect quality of life.