Eustachian Tube Dysfunction and Its Impact on Hearing in OSMF: Oral Submucous Fibrosis and Auditory Health: Exploring the Link with Eustachian Tube Dysfunction

There are 600 million of people who chew betel quid throughout their life regularly. Betel quid chewing is major contributory factors of precancerous and cancer of oral cavity in India and many other countries. OSMF is slowly progressive disease of oral mucous membrane and termed as premalignant lesion. Its prevalence in India is very high ranging from 0 to 0.2%. OSMF affects oral mucosa causing stiffness and rigidity leading to partial trismus.OSMF have multifactorial etiology which includes ingestion of chilies, genetic, chewing areca nut, nutritional deficiency etc. the main ingredient of areca nut is arecadine, arecoline, guacine, guyacoline.OSMF affects the ET function leading to hearing loss as it also affects other part of the oral cavity such as oral mucosa, soft and hard palate, pharynx and naso pharynx. There occurs a slow hearing deficit which can have functional and clinical significance. Thus, these patients show impaired responses to loud sounds, leading to conductive hearing loss.