Tinnitus and other auditory problems - occupational noise exposure below risk limits may cause inner ear dysfunction.

The aim of the investigation was to study if dysfunctions associated to the cochlea or its regulatory system can be found, and possibly explain hearing problems in subjects with normal or near-normal audiograms. The design was a prospective study of subjects recruited from the general population. The included subjects were persons with auditory problems who had normal, or near-normal, pure tone hearing thresholds, who could be included in one of three subgroups: teachers, Education; people working with music, Music; and people with moderate or negligible noise exposure, Other.

Noise-induced tinnitus: a comparison between four clinical groups without apparent hearing loss.

The number of people with normal hearing thresholds seeking medical help for tinnitus and other hearing problems is increasing. For diagnostic purposes, existence/nonexistence of lesions or combinations of lesions in the inner ear not reflected in the audiogram was evaluated with advanced hearing tests applied to tinnitus patients with certain backgrounds, including noise exposure. For forty-six patients with pronounced tinnitus, and other symptoms, tentative diagnoses were established, including judgments of the influence of four causative factors: (1) acoustic trauma, (2) music, (3) suspected hereditary, and (4) nonauditory, for example, stress or muscular tension.

The efficacy of N-acetylcysteine to protect the human cochlea from subclinical hearing loss caused by impulse noise: a controlled trial.

In military outdoor shooting training, with safety measures enforced, the risk of a permanent, noise-induced hearing loss is very small. But urban warfare training performed indoors, with reflections from walls, might increase the risk. A question is whether antioxidants can reduce the negative effects of noise on human hearing as it does on research animals.

Successful and unsuccessful users of bilateral amplification: differences and similarities in binaural performance.

Bilateral amplification seems to be the best solution for bilaterally hearing-impaired persons. Nevertheless, some individuals are unsuccessful with this strategy. The goals of the present study were to develop tests to improve the diagnostic test battery before rehabilitation of hearing-impaired persons with bilateral or unilateral amplification, and to evaluate the tests with normally-hearing subjects and with two groups of hearing-impaired persons.

Audiological findings in workers exposed to styrene alone or in concert with noise.

Audiological testing, interviews and exposure measurements were used to collect data on the health effects of styrene exposures in 313 workers from fiberglass and metal-product manufacturing plants and a mail terminal. The audiological test battery included pure-tone audiometry, distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE), psychoacoustic modulation transfer function, interrupted speech, speech recognition in noise and cortical response audiometry (CRA). Workers exposed to noise and styrene had significantly poorer pure-tone thresholds in the high-frequency range (3 to 8 kHz) than the controls, noise-exposed workers and those listed in a Swedish age-specific database.

Audiometric findings in workers exposed to low levels of styrene and noise.

Audiometry and exposure measurements were conducted on workers from fiberglass and metal products manufacturing plants and a mail distribution terminal (N = 313). Workers exposed to noise and styrene had significantly worse pure-tone thresholds at 2, 3, 4, and 6 kHz when compared with noise-exposed or nonexposed workers. Age, noise exposure, and urinary mandelic acid (a biologic marker for styrene) were the variables that met the significance level criterion in the multiple logistic regression.