Pressure chamber tests for selection of aircrew.

The Eustachian tube function requested from flying personnel today is generally regarded as acceptable if hearing and otoscopic findings are normal and there is no history of ear disease. Since increasing performance of modern aircrafts place more rigorous demands on the equilibrating capacity of the Eustachian tube and difficulty to clear the ears already is the most common cause of temporary grounding among flying personnel, the present requirements for tubal function might gradually get more and more inefficient. Inability to equilibrate in flight may lead to temporarily reduced hearing, acute ear pain and alternobaric vertigo that will affect the pilot's capacity and thus constitute a problem of flight safety. A testing procedure that makes it possible to continuously measure the middle ear pressure in subjects with intact eardrums during simulated flights in a pressure chamber would introduce a possibility to find basic medical standards of Eustachian tube function to be used in the selection of flying personnel. Student pilots, accepted for primary flight training, were examined in the present study by such a method. A comparison is made with the results of other tests of the Eustachian tube function in order to find out the relevance of the latter tests in the selection of flying personnel. The results are presented and discussed.