Gender-related hearing, balance and speech disorders: a review

Abstract

Gender medicine is not a separated branch of medicine, but a novel approach towards classical clinical disciplines. It consists of considering gender-related differences in terms of pathology, clinical manifestations, therapy and prognosis. Interesting data are available nowadays in the fields of cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis and pharmacology, where differences between men and women cannot be ignored for a correct treatment of the patients. In otolaryngology (ENT, Ear, Nose and Throat), gender differences are poorly studied, even if some evidences are currently emerging, especially in cancer (i.e. HPV-related oropharyngeal neoplasms), high airways infections and sleep obstructive apnoea. Most of literature often observes purely epidemiological diversities without analysing their causes. In audiological medicine, sex differences are substantially an unexplored field. In this review, we considered hearing, balance, speech disorders and otologic malformations by a gender filter. Differences between genders exist and do not seem a purely epidemiologic evidence, even if reasons behind are not fully investigated yet. With this paper, we would like to make physicians in audiological medicine more aware of the existence of gender variability, also in their clinical discipline. This could improve both further studies and have therapeutic consequences for population who suffer from hearing, balance, speech diseases or craniofacial abnormalities.

Keywords:

• Gender differences
• audiological medicine
• balance
• hearing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.