Pure-tone threshold description of an elderly French screened population

Objectives: To describe the distribution of pure-tone hearing thresholds of a Caucasian population living in the south of France aged 70 years and older. To establish age- and sex-adjusted normative hearing thresholds based on results of subjects free of noise and ototoxic drug exposure and to compare them with hearing thresholds of exposed (E) subjects.Design: Cross-sectional analysis of a longitudinal epidemiologic cohort study.Setting: Montpellier suburb, south of France.Participants: A total of 778 subjects 70 years old and older were examined. Noise exposure, ototoxic medication use, and medical history were collected. Hearing thresholds were obtained via pure-tone audiometry. After excluding patients with ear-related disease, 659 subjects were further analyzed (270 men and 389 women). Noise or ototoxic medication exposure was found in 364 subjects (E subjects), whereas 295 had no exposure (nonexposed [NE] subjects).Methods: Median pure-tone thresholds, lower deviation, and upper deviation were calculated for the NE subjects with a statistical method similar to the ISO 7029 norm and were compared with thresholds of E subjects.Results: Hearing thresholds, especially in high frequencies, increased with age more for women than for men. Median thresholds of E subjects were significantly higher than those for the NE sample in men.Conclusion: Age- and sex-adjusted hearing thresholds could well be useful in the study of the impact of environmental and genetic factors on hearing loss in the elderly. The next step would be to quantify the impact of noise, ototoxic drug exposure, and genetics using these age- and sex-adjusted thresholds.

目的：描述法国南部70岁及以上高加索人群纯音听力阈值的分布情况。根据无噪声和耳毒性药物暴露受试者的结果建立年龄和性别调整后的标准听力阈值，并将其与暴露（E）受试者的听力阈值进行比较。 设计：一项纵向流行病学队列研究的横断面分析。 地点：法国南部蒙彼利埃郊区。 参与者：共对778名70岁及以上的受试者进行了检查。收集了噪声暴露、耳毒性药物使用情况和病史。通过纯音测听获得听力阈值。在排除耳部相关疾病患者后，对659名受试者（270名男性和389名女性）进行了进一步分析。364名受试者（E受试者）有噪声或耳毒性药物暴露，而295名受试者无暴露（未暴露[NE]受试者）。 方法：采用类似于ISO 7029标准的统计方法计算NE受试者的纯音阈值中位数、下限偏差和上限偏差，并与E受试者的阈值进行比较。 结果：听力阈值，尤其是高频听力阈值，女性随年龄增长的幅度大于男性。男性中E受试者的阈值中位数显著高于NE样本。 结论：年龄和性别调整后的听力阈值在研究环境和遗传因素对老年人听力损失的影响方面可能非常有用。下一步将是利用这些年龄和性别调整后的阈值来量化噪声、耳毒性药物暴露和遗传因素的影响。