Music students: conventional hearing thresholds and at high frequencies

AbstractIntroductionResearch has shown that hearing loss in musicians may cause difficulty in timbre recognition and tuning of instruments.AimTo analyze the hearing thresholds from 250Hz to 16,000Hz in a group of music students and compare them to a non-musician group in order to determine whether high-frequency audiometry is a useful tool in the early detection of hearing impairment.MethodsStudy design was a retrospective observational cohort. Conventional and high-frequency audiometry was performed in 42 music students (Madsen Itera II audiometer and TDH39P headphones for conventional audiometry, and HDA 200 headphones for high-frequency audiometry).ResultsOf the 42 students, 38.1% were female students and 61.9% were male students, with a mean age of 26 years. At conventional audiometry, 92.85% had hearing thresholds within normal limits; but even within the normal limits, the worst results were observed in the left ear for all frequencies, except for 4000Hz; compared to the non-musician group, the worst results occurred at 500Hz in the left ear, and at 250Hz, 6000Hz, 9000Hz, 10,000Hz, and 11,200Hz in both the ears.ConclusionThe periodic evaluation of high-frequency thresholds may be useful in the early detection of hearing loss in musicians