Tinnitus Among Medical Students Using Personal Sound System
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Introduction
Statistical data on prevalence of tinnitus in India and on the relationship between exposure to recreational sound/music and the presence of tinnitus are scarce. This study was conducted to assess relationship between tinnitus and the use of personal sound system(PSS) in medical students.
Materials and Methods
A questionnaire based study was conducted on 100 randomly selected medical students to assess their sound habits with the use of PSS. Information on commonly used intensity, frequency, duration of use, type of earphones and severity of tinnitus was sought. Conventional frequency audiometry (0.25-8kHz) was also performed.
Result
The prevalence of tinnitus was found to be 33%, which was on the higher side of the global prevalence data. All the medical students surveyed in this study used personal sound system. Majority of the students (45%) used PSS less than 1 hour daily. More than 60% of the students complaining of tinnitus preferred louder settings in their PSS.
Discussion
The most common personal sound system used was mobile phones. No statistically significant association was seen with relation to the type of personal sound system, the type of ear phone used, average duration of use and hearing loss. Tinnitus was found to have statistically significant association with volume in our study with majority having tinnitus listening to higher levels of sound.
Conclusion
Use of personal sound system is common in medical students. Though duration of use of the personal sound system was not associated with the complaint of tinnitus, exposure to louder sounds had statistically significant association with tinnitus.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
References
Michael G. Scott-Brown’s Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck surgery. 7th edition,Volume 3. Great Britain: Hodder Arnold; 2008. 3594-19
Makar SK, Biswas A, Shatapathy P. The Impact of Tinnitus on Sufferers in Indian Population. Indian J Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2014; 66 (Suppl 1): S37–S51
Davis A, Refaie AE. Epidemiology of tinnitus. In: Tyler R, Editor.Tinnitus handbook. San Diego: Singular Publishing Group; 2000.1-23
Lasisi AO, Abiona T, Gureje O. Tinnitus in the elderly : profile, correlates and impact in the Nigerian study of ageing. Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2010; 143(4): 510-5
Gilles A, Van Hal G, De Ridder D, Wouters K, Van de Heyning P.Epidemiology of noise - induced tinnitus and the attitudes and beliefs towards noise and hearing protection in adolescents. PLOS One. 2013 ; 8(7): e70297
Smith PA, Davis A, Ferguson M, Lutman ME. The prevalence and type of social noise exposure in young adults in England. Noise & Health. 2000; 2(6): 41-56
Kim MG, Hong SM, Shim HJ, Kim YD, Cha CI, Yeo SG. Hearing threshold of Korean adolescents associated with the use of personal music players. Yonsei Med J. 2009 ; 50(6): 771-6
Torre P 3rd. Young adults’ use and output level settings of personal music systems. Ear Hear. 2008 ; 29 (5):791-9
Sunny D, Nkiruka C, Abayomi O.Subjective tinnitus and its association with use of ear phones among students of the College of Medicine, University of Lagos,Nigeria. International Tinnitus Journal 2012; 17(2): 169-72
LePage EL, Murray NM. Latent cochlear damage in personal stereo users : a study based on click - evoked otoacoustic emissions. Med J Aust. 1998 ; 169(11-12): 588-92
Meyer-Bisch C. Epidemiological evaluation of hearing damage related to strongly amplified music (personal cassette players, discotheques, rock concerts)--high-definition audiometric survey on 1364 subjects. Audiology. 1996 ; 35(3): 121-42
Williams W. Noise exposure levels from personal stereo use. Int J Audiol. 2005; 44(4): 231-6
Vogel I, Verschuure H, van der Ploeg CP, Brug J, Raat H. Estimating adolescent risk for hearing loss based on data from a large school based survey. Am J Public Health. 2010 ;100(6):1095-100.