Cigarette smoking is a major health problem. Clinical studies have
suggested that, cigarette smoking may be associated with hearing loss.
The effect of smoking on the cochlear functions was studied in a sample
of 80 volunteers aged 20-40 yrs. They were divided into 50 regular cigar
ette smokers "study group" and 30 non-smokers "control group". The two
groups were subjected to full history, pure tone audiometry, speech audiometry,
immittancemetry and Transient evoked otoacoustic emissions.
The results of TEOAEs showed 24% failed responses, 32% partial pass
responses in the study group in comparison to near normal responses in
the control group. Also there were decrease in the amplitude of TEOAEs
in the study group compared to the control group, this difference was sta
tistically significant The duration of smoking showed significant effect on
the results of TEOAEs in contrast to the age whichshowed no effect. The
authors conduded that cigarette smoking has an effect on cochlear Junc
tions at the level of outer hair cells resulting in hearing loss. |
