Hearing loss with frequent diving (deaf divers)

An audiometric survey was performed on a group of professional abalone divers, all of whom had experienced a great deal of exposure to dysbaric conditions. The results of this survey revealed that, even allowing for the very liberal requirements of the Australian standards for divers, over 60% had an unacceptable sensorineural, high frequency deafness. In half of these cases it was unilateral, and half bilateral. Making allowance for age, over 70% had evidence of hearing loss to a degree considered by the National Acoustic Laboratories to be compensatable.