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Abstract
Objective: To investigate the prevalence of ear diseases, other otological risk factors potentially affecting hearing, and noise exposure among adults. Furthermore, subject-related factors possibly associated with hearing impairment (HI), i.e. handedness, eye color, and susceptibility to sunburn, were studied. Design: A cross-sectional, unscreened, population-based, epidemiological study among adults. Study sample: The subjects (n = 850), aged 54–66 years, were randomly sampled from the population register. A questionnaire survey, an otological examination, and pure-tone audiometry were performed. Results: Chronic middle-ear disease (both active and inactive) was the most common ear disease with a prevalence of 5.3%, while the prevalence of otosclerosis was 1.3%, and that of Ménière's disease, 0.7%. Noise exposure was reported by 46% of the subjects, and it had no effect on hearing among those with no ear disease or other otological risk factors for HI. Dark eye color and non-susceptibility to sunburn were associated with HI among noise-exposed subjects. Conclusions: Common ear diseases and other otological risk factors constitute a major part of the etiologies of HI among adults. Contrary to previous studies, noise exposure turned out to have only marginal effect on hearing among those with no otological risk factors.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their gratitude to the ARHI partners. We would also like to thank the personnel of the Hearing Centre of the Oulu University Hospital and other staff that helped us to conduct the project. Some results of the present article were included in the thesis of the correspondent author Samuli Hannula: ISBN 978-951-42-9631-4.
Declaration of interest: The authors report no declarations of interest.
This study was supported by the European ARHI Project (QLRT-2001-00331).