Abstract:Introduction: Smoking is widespread addiction among youth and is extensively practiced despite of its harmful effects. Smoking effects all the systems in the body but a little is known about the effects of smoking on hearing thresholds, although link was established 40 years ago, information on the effects of smoking at the cochlear and auditory central nervous system levels has become available recently. The present study aims at studying whether cigarette smoking causes any changes in auditory thresholds in smokers as compared to age matched non smoker.
Materials and Methods: The study included 50 male smokers of age group between 20-40 years and 50 age matched male non smokers, who were selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. These subjects were recruited from teaching, non teaching staff of Sri Devraj Urs academy of higher education and research and also attenders of the patients coming to R.L. Jalappa hospital. After taking informed consent and data regarding their smoking history (expressed in pack -years), they were subjected to pure tone audiometric evaluation and test results were entered in audiogram. The data thus obtained was treated with appropriate statistical test like student t test.
Results: There was statistically significant difference in auditory air and bone conduction thresholds at all frequencies for both right and left ear.
Conclusion: Smoking causes increase in both air conduction and bone conduction thresholds at all frequencies
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