People DO Suffer Hearing Loss After a Loud Concert

Almost everybody at some point in their lives have attended a loud concert or loud nightclub.

Almost everybody will also recall a temporary reduction in their hearing with or without ringing afterwards for a short period of time.

This phenomenon is called temporary threshold shift (TTS) whereby the affected person has a temporary hearing loss that may last hours to days due to temporary damage of the outer hair cells of the cochlea.

If loud nose exposure happens enough times, permanent hearing loss can occur.

For some, permanent hearing loss may occur after attending numerous loud concerts whereas in other more "susceptible" individuals, it can happen after a single loud concert.

It doesn't even have to be a loud music concert. ANY loud noise exposure can do including shooting guns, listening to a portable music player like the iPod, fireworks, playing in an orchestra/band, etc.

However, loud concerts are of particular interest given how many individuals are exposed all at once and provided a unique research opportunity which was presented on May 21, 2012 at the American Otologic Society Meeting in Los Angeles.

The researchers (led by Dr. Jennifer Derebery of the House Ear Institute) essentially took hearing test before and after the concert of 29 teenagers.

72% suffered objective hearing loss after the concert though only 53% reported subjective hearing loss. 25% reported new onset tinnitus after the concert.

Of note, hearing ear plugs were offered to the study subjects, but only 3 accepted them.

Adult researchers who sat with the teenagers under investigation measured sound levels throughout the concert. During the 26 songs played during the three hour concert, sound levels ranged from 82 to 110 decibels with an average of 98.5 decibels. The mean level was greater than 100 decibels for 10 of the 26 songs.

As a reference, ear pain occurs at 125dB. Jet engine noise is at 140dB. Sustained loud noise exposure of 90-95dB can result in permanent hearing loss.

OSHA (Office of Safety and Health Administration) mandates workers to never be exposed to sound levels of 100dB for more than 2 hours per day (no more than 4 hours per day at 95dB).

Clearly something more needs to be done to protect teenagers' hearing, especially given how few accepted hearing ear plugs. A fundamental cultural shift would most likely have to occur with encouragement from not only the musicians but also parents and teachers...

OR, the music volume at concerts should be turned down... No boos please.


Reference:
Teenagers Hear Worse After Attending Concert. LiveScience 5/21/12

Kissing the Ear Can Cause Permanent Hearing Loss

MSNBC reported 3/29/12 about a phenomenon called cochlear ear-kiss injury. This condition is when hearing loss occurs after a person kisses someone else over the ear, usually a mom over a baby's or child's ear.

Right after the kiss, a person can suffer from immediate and potentially permanent hearing loss along with other symptoms including ringing, sensitivity to sound, sound distortion, and aural fullness.

How or why does this occur?

With a kiss, a strong suction is created within the ear canal that pulls on the eardrum which tugs on the middle ear bones that can lead to turbulence within the inner ear.

Infants are particularly susceptible to this condition given their ear canals are SO small and the suction created by an adult kiss over the ear can be so strong.

There are other variations of this type of ear/hearing injury.

Barotrauma of the ear can lead to similar type issues due to sudden pressure changes from flying, parachute jumping, diving into water, SCUBA, snorkeling, etc.

Getting slapped over the ear can do the same thing as cochlear ear-kiss injury, but in reverse. Rather than suction from a kiss creating strong negative pressure within the ear canal, a slap over the ear creates sudden strong positive pressure.

At times, such pressure changes can get so severe that the eardrum can rupture.

Source:
Innocent 'kiss of deaf' can cause permanent hearing loss. MSNBC 3/29/12

The kiss of deaf: Four-year-old's big smooch left her mom with partial hearing loss. Newsday. June 7, 2008

Earthquake Helps Man Regain Hearing... Perhaps Not!

Fox News reported on Aug 25, 2011 about Robert Valderzak who suffered conductive hearing loss for a few months... until the earthquake shook him and the rest of the East Coast after which he was able to hear.

Though this may sound miraculous, conductive hearing loss is one of those reversible type of hearing loss. It is not permanent. Example of conductive hearing loss include:

• Earwax
• Fluid in the ears
• Ear infection
• Eustachian tube dysfunction
• Problems with the middle ear bones

All these problems can be "fixed" and the hearing loss reversed. Permanent hearing loss is due to nerve damage and a reversal of a nerve type of hearing loss could be considered "miraculous."

Now how could an earthquake conceivably reverse a conductive hearing loss? Without benefit of having examined Mr. Valderzak, perhaps he had a lot of earwax and the quake "shook" the earwax out or free (kind of like when a person goes swimming and gets some water in the ear that requires head-shaking to get it out).

It could also be coincidence. There are thousands of people who suffer conductive hearing loss every day for one reason or other. Often, this type of conductive hearing loss will spontaneously resolve one day after days or weeks or even months go by even if not aggressively treated medically. That's why in kids who have fluid in the ears (which causes conductive hearing loss), we sometimes wait 3 months before we put ear tubes in. Quite a number resolve on their own spontaneously.

Now if there are thousands of people with conductive hearing loss and we expect a few to spontaneously recover their hearing each day... and the earthquake was felt by millions throughout the East Coast... I'm surprised that this particular patient is the only one who regained his hearing after the earthquake. I suspect there's at least a dozen that probably regained their hearing that day that the media has not heard/reported about... as well as the day before and the day after. I also suspect that there's probably a few hundred that "lost" their hearing during the earthquake due to earwax, fluid buildup in the ears, ear infection, etc.

Read the Fox New article here.