Causes of hearing impairment evaluated by the upper limit of hearing among Chinese people in an urban area Tiankui WANG1, Ikuharu MORIOKA2, Hiroichi YAMAMOTO1, Nobuyuki MIYAI1, Kazuhisa MIYASHITA1 and Shintaro TAKEDA1 The objective of this study was to clarify the causes of hearing impairment among Chinese people in an urban area. The subjects were 1,293 citizens aged 6-73 years who lived in the dor mitories of the Shandong Medical University in Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province. Each

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... ect was asked to complete a brief questionnaire on otological symptoms, personal history, and use of noisy plaything. The upper limit of hearing was carried out with sweep oscillators that we originally designed and developed. The subjects were divided into two groups. The sub jects whose upper limit of hearing was the mean or higher than the mean for their sex and age stage were described as the group with good hearing (661 subjects), and the subjects with an upper limit of hearing below the mean for their sex and age stage were described as the group with poor hearing (632 subjects). There was no significant difference in age between the good hearing and poor hearing groups in either sex. The prevalence rates of factors affecting hearing in the poor hearing group were significantly higher in head trauma and otitis media in males and otitis media in females. The logistic regression analysis corroborated that head trauma and otitis media might be the causes of deterioration of the upper limit of hearing among Chinese people in an urban area.