Does Long-Term Playing Violin Cause Unilateral Hearing Loss?

Objective: This study compared the differences between two ears, the one which is close to the violin and the far one from the violin, in individuals who have been playing violin, and evaluated by using Distortion Product Otoacoustic Emission.Methods: 30 individuals between the ages of 18-30, playing violin for at least 2 hours a day for 5 years and having no history of hearing loss or ear diseases were included in the study.Pure tone audiometry test and Distortion Product Otoacoustic Emission test were apLONplied on all subjects included in the study.The differences in these measurements for between two ears were subjected to statistical analyses.Results: In all frequencies (996 -7998 Hz) SNRs of the ear close to the violin and the ear far from the violin were obtained normal, above 6 dB SNR in the results of Distortion Product Otoacoustic Emission.However, there were not statistically significant differences between two ears (p>0.05),only at 1416 Hz a statistically significant difference was observed between the two ears (p = 0.03).Conclusion: The violinists had better hearing function than expected.But noiseinduced hearing loss happens slowly over time and may be hard to detect at first.Violinists are at risk for occupational exposure to high noise.Therefore, the violinists with normal hearing should be monitored by DPOAE which shows noise-induced damage in outer hear cells.