Field assessment of acute auditory responses to environmental exposures in close quarters tactics training
Devon Kulinski1, Coral Dirks1, Walter Carr2
1Audiology and Speech Center, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, MD, USA.
Objective:
The purpose of this study was to evaluate auditory performance of military instructors as part of a training course involving noise and blast exposure. Boothless audiometry was used to estimate the test-retest reliability of the auditory measures under realistic field conditions and to determine risk of acute auditory injury during standard training practices.
Design And Study Sample:
Thirteen U.S. Marine instructors participated in study activities. An audiologic testing suite embedded in a noise-attenuating headset was used to test various tone detection tasks on subjects after exposure. Acoustic exposures were captured with sound level meters.
Results:
Boothless audiometry provide highly repeatable results for various tests of auditory performance in the field environment. In this test population, changes in auditory performance pre- and post-noise exposure were minimal for most measures. The notable exception was binaural (NoSπ) tone detection, which showed significant degradations both as a function of pre- and post-noise exposure on the same day and as a result of cumulative noise exposure over the period of the study.
Conclusions:
Study outcomes are consistent with prior laboratory and epidemiological work and suggest a link between the binaural processes required for NoSπ detection and the hearing-related issues reported by blast-exposed service members.
