Hear today, gone tomorrow: an assessment of portable entertainment player use and hearing acuity in a community sample.
BACKGROUND
Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is a common but preventable disability. The purpose of this study was to assess the understanding of NIHL in a community sample in the context of exposure to portable music players, including MP3 players, and personal hearing acuity as tested with the Welch Allyn Audioscope 3.


METHODS
A cross-sectional convenience sample of 94 adults (18 to 65 years old) at a university recreation center completed an analysis of personal use of portable digital music players (MP3 players), concerns about hearing loss, and a 3-dB-level hearing test at 4 levels of speech frequency in a low ambient noise setting.


RESULTS
The majority of participants (85%) were concerned about hearing loss, willing to protect their hearing with lower volume (77%), had little measurable hearing loss but were exposed to longer and louder periods of noise than other national samples, and mistakenly felt that NIHL is a medically reversible condition. Many (40%) also wanted their family medicine physician to be more concerned about their hearing.


CONCLUSIONS
Family medicine physicians are in a key position to provide basic information on the preventability and negative consequences of NIHL, as well as to identify and refer patients with identified hearing loss.
Shah
Samit
S
College of Medicine, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA.
Gopal
Bharat
B
Reis
Janet
J
Novak
Michael
M
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004430:Ear Protective Devices; D005194:Family Practice; D005260:Female; D006317:Hearing Loss, Noise-Induced / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology*; D006801:Humans; D007087:Illinois / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009146:Music; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects*; D011320:Primary Health Care; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D012307:Risk Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult