Reliability of an extended version of the 3m™ Eargage tool to assess earcanal size and assist earplug selection

Abstract

Objective

Evaluate the ability of an extended version of the 3 M^TM Eargage to estimate the earcanal size and assess the likelihood that a particular earplug can fit an individual’s earcanal, ultimately serving as a tool for selecting earplugs in the field.

Design

Earcanal morphology, assessed through earcanal earmolds scans, is compared to earcanal size assessed with the extended eargage (EE) via box plots and Pearson linear correlations coefficients. Relations between attenuation measured on participants (for 6 different earplugs) and their earcanal size assessed with the EE are established via comparison tests.

Study sample

121 participants exposed to occupational noise (103 men, 18 women, mean age 47 years).

Results

The earcanal size assessed with the EE allows for estimating the area of the earcanal’s first bend cross-section (correlation coefficient $r$ = 0.533, p < 0.001). Extremely large earcanals (12.7% of earcanals in our sample) lead to significantly lower earplug attenuation (potentially inadequate) than smaller earcanals.

Conclusions

The EE is a simple and inexpensive tool easily deployable in the field to assist earplugs selection. When extended with sizes larger than the maximum size of the commercial tool, it allows for detecting individuals with extremely large earcanals who are most likely to be under-protected.

Keywords:

• Earplugs
• hearing protection device
• earcanal sizing tool
• personal attenuation rating
• morphology

Acknowledgement

The authors acknowledge the support of the Institut de Recherche Robert-Sauvé en Santé et en Sécurité du Travail (IRSST) (Funding Reference No. 2015-0014) and the MITACS Accelerate program (Funding Reference No. IT10643). The authors extend their gratitude to Marc-André Gaudreau for his contribution in designing and producing the supplementary spheres instrumental in the development of the EE.

Informed consent

Informed written consent to take part in the study has been obtained by all participants

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Declaration of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process

During the preparation of this work the authors used GPT-3.5 (OpenAI, 2021), retrieved from https://openai.com, in order to enhance the text’s coherence, grammar, and syntax. After using this tool, the authors reviewed and edited the content as needed and take full responsibility for the content of the publication.

Additional information

Funding

This study was financially supported by IRSST (Funding Reference No. 2015-0014) and MITACS (Funding Reference No. IT10643).