Hypothesis
Combat trauma casualties will have an increased incidence of adverse hearing outcomes compared with equivalent but non-injured service personnel. Those injured by a blast will have a higher incidence of hearing injury than those injured by non-blast mechanisms.
Summary
This project investigates whether combat injury was associated with hearing injury in a cohort of UK military personnel who were deployed to Afghanistan and whether the mechanism of injury influenced this relationship. The hypothesis is that combat trauma casualties will have an increased incidence of adverse hearing outcomes compared with equivalent but non-injured service personnel. Those injured by a blast will have a higher incidence of hearing injury than those injured by non-blast mechanisms.
The number of physically injured military personnel will be frequency-matched to the uninjured personnel using the ADVANCE study hearing assessment data (pure tone audiometry at 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6kHz). The results will be compared to audiograms obtained prior to deployment. Pairwise comparisons are to be made between injured and non-injured personnel and subgroup analysis between those injured by blast or non-blast mechanisms.
Keywords
Hearing, Blast Injury, Audiometry