بررسی کاهش آستانه شنوایی و عوامل مرتبط با آن در رانندگان کامیون کرمان

Background and Aims:
Noise is the third most dangerous pollutant in Metropolises and is one of the most important risk factors in the
transportation industry. This study was conducted with the aim of investigating truck drivers hearing loss and its
effective factors.
Methods:
This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2011 in Kerman City on 150 professional truck drivers who had a dossier
at the center of screening occupational diseases, and were chosen by stratified random sampling. Information was
collected by a checklist including age, marital status, military services status, smoking status and audiometry done in
the current year and were analyzed by using SPSS 18 using correlation, ANOVA, Paired t-test , McNemar's test and
Adjusted Linear Regression.
Results:
The mean age of participants was 43.0±10.56 and in all frequencies a significant difference was found between the
hearing threshold of drivers with different work experiences, and hearing loss increased with increase in work
experience. Hearing loss increased significantly in all frequencies with age increase as well. Hearing loss in
frequencies more than 2000 H was significantly more in the left ear than the right.
Conclusion:
Although age increase is an important factor in hearing loss, but alone, it does not justify the asymmetric hearing loss
at the quantities measured in the drivers in this study. It appears that driving due to constant exposure to noise can lead
to hearing loss in drivers.

*Corresponding Author: Narges Khanjani, Department of Epidemiology and Statistic, Faculty of Public Health, Kerman University of Medical
Sciences, Kerman, Iran.
Email: n_khanjani@kmu.ac.ir.