Hearing impairment following radiotherapy in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (Review).

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a geographically prevalent malignant mucosal tumor endemic to southern China and Southeast Asia. Radiotherapy constitutes the core curative treatment for NPC, often combined with chemotherapy or targeted therapy in clinical practice. Hearing loss is a common radiotherapy-related complication caused by radiation damage to middle ear structures, inner ear cells and auditory nerves, with a variable incidence affected by treatment protocols and patient characteristics. Such auditory dysfunction negatively impacts patients' cognition, emotion and quality of life. However, systematic summaries of subjective evaluation tools and targeted non-surgical rehabilitation strategies for radiotherapy-induced hearing impairment remain insufficient. Accordingly, this review aims to elaborate on the classification, multidimensional clinical impacts, subjective assessment scales, and non-surgical interventions of radiotherapy-related hearing loss, so as to provide evidence-based references for clinical rehabilitation of NPC survivors.