A Cross Sectional study on the Effect of Whole Body Vibration with Noise on Hearing in Drivers and Conductors

Noise induced hearing is the second most common cause of the hearing loss, which is most prevalent in the industrial and automobile sector people. Hearing is one of the vital sense needs to be concentrated in this group for occupational health hazard and to reduce the road traffic accidents with public safety. But employees are not aware of it due to inadequate knowledge about NIHL. Many factors affects the influence of noise on hearing loss. Vibration one of most common factor experienced by transport employees. Hearing loss one of the symptom of the vibration syndrome needs to be concentrated in drivers to promote road safety program and public safety. Although more studies are done on combined effect of vibration and noise, still the synergism of above two factors are inconclusive and infantile in large scale study. But above mentioned group are high risk for occupational hearing loss, needs to be concentrated. So I preferred to study the effect of WBV and noise on hearing in drivers and conductors, who are in regular contact with engine and noise. METHOD : This is a cross sectional study in selective subjects from public transport corporation, where drivers and conductors are compared for SNHL using PTA from their health program data in otolaryngology department. RESULT : Though we find significantly mild difference between drivers and conductors, drivers are earlier to affect with NIHL within 10- 15 years of service whereas conductors face the same loss in the later period of service. This is due to vibration synergism with NIHL following which drivers become non sensitive to noise but age factor adds on.