July 19, 2007

I think I am bad luck for the clinic. Everytime I am in there we only have one client or no one shows at all. So since I didn't see anyone, I will continue to share interesting articles I have come across. This week's article is from the most recent ASHA Leader.

The article was title Otoacoustic Emissions: Reducing and Preventing Noise-Induced Hearing Loss. I thought the article was interesting because the authors were discussing utilizing OAEs in Hearing Conservation Programs. The authors discussed that the OAEs would not be able to completely replace audiometric testing, but they can help to distinguish ears with normal hearing from those with different degrees of hearing loss. The authors explained that OAEs can help to determined a permanent hearing threshold shift, but since a Noise Induced Hearing Loss is typically slowly progressing, it may take too long to gather the information needed to determine if the employee has a hearing loss.
The authors stated that in order to utilize OAE results in a Hearing Conservation Program, they would need to conduct testing to compare individuals without a hearing loss (a control group) and those with NIHL. They also stated another drawback to using OAEs is that they tend to decrease with aging, so it would be difficult to determine if the low level OAEs are a result from aging or noise exposure. As the authors stated OAEs may greatly help in identifying Hearing Conservation Personnel with a NIHL, but more research into this area is needed.

Reference:
Marshall, L., and Miller, J.A.L. (2007). Otoacoustic emissions: reducing and preventing noise-induced hearing loss. The ASHA Leader, 12(9), 8-11.