Diving and high-frequency hearing loss

[bluebanded goby]

Recently I saw an otologist at the House Ear Clinic in Los Angeles, which I gather is well-known in the world of hearing problems. She noted that I have a fair amount of high-frequency hearing loss in both ears which, in my mid-50s, is just becoming serious enough to warrant hearing aids. My mother and sister also have this, so I assume it's a genetic predisposition.

After I mentioned that I dive, the otologist said that divers as a group are known to develop more high-frequency hearing loss than the general population, though the reason why is not clear. She didn't put this out as a reason to stop diving, though. From searching past threads here, I see some discussion of high-frequency hearing loss as a possible consequence of inner ear damage (perhaps from barotrauma or inner-ear DCS, etc).

I mentioned this to an ENT who is a diver, and he said he was not aware that divers have more hearing loss than the general population, though given the stress that the sport puts on the ears he said it wouldn't be surprising.

What do the rest of you say? Is this a known tendency among those who dive on a regular basis? I do remember reading an article of reminiscences of early divers from the 1960s, many of whom, the interviewer said, were noticeably hard of hearing.

 

[SurDo2]

Commercial dive medicals require a hearing test every two years. After almost 20 years of diving I have considerable hearing loss. Human beings aren't meant to go underwater.

 

[doctormike]

Chronic conductive hearing loss (problems with the middle ear, bones of hearing and eardrum) can happen after repeated barotrauma involving blood or fluid in the middle ear. Inner ear injury causing sensorineural hearing loss (from DCS or a fistula) is very rare.

While there is anecdotal data about (mainly commercial) divers having hearing loss, much of this comes from the old days before OSHA, etc... when it was just expected that this was part of the job. Cassion workers and sponge divers in previous eras would often have huge eardrum perforations with chronic inflammation and deafness, etc...

On the other hand, high frequency sensorineural (e.g. non-conductive) hearing loss associated with aging (presbycusus) is VERY common, in divers and non-divers alike. I would certainly defer to a House clinic otologist (one of the best places in the world for ear problems!) on whether or not there is a slight increase in the incidence of this in the diving population.

However, the more important question is whether or not a person with a HF SNHL is at risk for further loss because of continued diving. It sounds like the otologist didn't think that this was a problem, which seems like a reasonable conclusion to me as well. Of course, this would be assuming that we are just talking about presbycusus, and there is no inner ear fistula or other similar underlying problem.

Best,

Mike

 

[idocsteve]

I'm sorry, can you repeat the question?