Do Flights Affect Hearing in Hot Air Balloon Pilots?

PURPOSE: This study aimed to reveal occupational effects on the hearing of hot air balloon (HAB) pilots and examine the relationship between the duration of experience and these effects. METHOD: This study included 31 male HAB pilots and a control group of 32 male participants. Tympanometry, eustachian tube function (ETF) test, pure-tone audiometry, and transient evoked otoacoustic emission (TEOAE) tests were performed. RESULTS: Pure-tone audiometry results were significantly worse at 125, 500, and 6000 Hz in the right ear and 125, 500, 4000, and 6000 Hz in the left ear in the HAB group than the control group. Although tympanometry evaluation parameters did not differ between the HAB and control groups, ETF test was significantly worse in the HAB group than the controls bilaterally. TEOAE results were significantly worse at 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz in the right ear and 4000 Hz in the left ear in the HAB group than the controls. There was a significant positive correlation for 125, 4000, 6000, and 8000 Hz between the duration of experience and right ear hearing thresholds. For the left ear, the duration of experience showed a significant positive correlation at 3000, 4000, 6000, and 8000 Hz. When the relationship between the duration of experience and TEOAE results was evaluated, a significant negative correlation was found at 4000 Hz in the left ear. CONCLUSION: In HAB pilots, in whom eustachian tube dysfunction is quite common, noise and high altitude affected hearing, especially low and high frequencies, and the duration of experience was found to be associated with hearing thresholds.

Facial and Auditory Recognition Abilities of Implanted Primary Schoolers.

OBJECTIVE: Emotions are often conveyed via visual and together with the auditory mode in social interaction. We aimed to investigate the ability to recognize facial and/or auditory emotions in school-aged children with cochlear implantation and healthy controls. METHODS: All participants were asked to respond to facial emotions of Ekman and Friesen's pictures, then auditory emotions, and last, they were asked to respond to video-based dynamic synchronous facial and auditory emotions. RESULTS: The mean accuracy rates in recognizing anger (p = 0.025), surprise (p = 0.029), and neutral (p = 0.029) faces were significantly worse in children with cochlear implants (CIs) than in healthy controls. They were significantly worse than healthy controls in recognizing all auditory emotions except auditory emotion of fear (p = 0.067). The mean accuracy rates in recognizing video-based auditory/facial emotions of surprise (p = 0.031) and neutral (p = 0.029) emotions were significantly worse in children with CIs. CONCLUSION: The children with hearing loss were poorer in recognizing surprise, anger, and neutral facial emotions than healthy children; they had similar performance in recognizing anger emotions when both stimuli were given synchronously which may have a positive effect on social behaviors. It seems beneficial that emotion recognition training should be included in rehabilitation programs.