Hearing in women survivors of myocardial infarction

Hearing for pure tone air-conduction in a sample of women survivors of myocardial infarction (MI) and a random sample of women living in Copenhagen has been examined. For both groups we found that the hearing decreases with age, but the MI survivors at all frequencies have the poorest hearing compared with the random sample. There was no difference between the two groups as regards smoking habits or blood pressure. The noise exposure in the two groups was also the same. There was a significant difference in the mean values of s-cholesterol between the two groups, but we found no correlation between s-cholesterol and hearing in the random sample. Our study supports the hypothesis that MI survivors are more biologically aged than age-matched controls.