Findings concerning teenagers disputed.

• Position: Hearing Loss - Brief article

Fewer than 20% of teenagers in the U.S. have a hearing loss as a result of exposure to loud sounds, contends research from scientists at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

The new research offers a different analysis of data reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association last summer

It points out that the small hearing losses that audiologists are trying to identify with conventional hearing tests are subject to measurement error, and that as many as 10% or more of children are identified falsely as having a noise-induced hearing loss using these methods.

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"Most media emphasize the link between loud sounds and hearing loss when referring to the JAMA study," points out Bert Schlauch, professor in the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences. "However, many of the findings of the JAMA study are not consistent with hearing loss caused by exposure to loud sounds." These conclusions were drawn from an ongoing study of the hearing of the University of...