Relationships of health-related quality of life with subjective noise sensitivity in the subjects with normal hearing

Abstract

Objective

Our aim was to look for the association of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) with subjective noise sensitivity (SNS) in the audiologically and perceptually normal hearing subjects since HRQoL was suggested as a tool during the intervention of the hearing impaired people.

Methods

The audiological evaluation was first done in the subjects who were enrolled from the previous study in which Weinstein Noise Sensitivity Scale (WNSS) was adapted to Turkish. Then, the Short Form-36 (SF-36) scores were determined and the relationships of WNSS score with the SF-36 scores were analysed in respect to gender, age, audiological variables.

Results

Of 210, 124 subjects (M:44; F:80) were taken to the study. WNSS score presented no gender difference and correlation with age and audiological variables. It was found that WNSS score was significantly correlated with emotional and mental domains of HRQoL in women and physical and social functioning in men. Role limitations due to physical health, mental health, role limitations due to emotional problems, social functioning, vitality and mental composite scores were significantly lower in the upper SNS subgroup.

Conclusion

It was revealed that SNS was strongly associated with HRQoL in perceptionally and audiologically normal hearing males and females via different domains. Therefore, in case of using HRQoL in audiological care, our data suggest that SNS should be taken into account.

Keywords:

• Health-related quality of life
• Short form-36
• subjective noise sensitivity
• hearing loss

Ethical policy and institutional review board statement

Approval was obtained from the ethics committee of Gazi University. The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Consent to participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by MKY, ÇG and YKK. Analysis was performed by MKY and YKK. The first draft of the manuscript was written by MKY and YKK and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

No funding was received for conducting this study.