Veterans More At Risk of Early and Severe Hearing Loss and Tinnitus: Study

Veterans have a higher rate of earlier and more severe cases of hearing loss and tinnitus, a new report has found.

A study by researchers from the University of California School of Health Sciences and the Veteran Affairs San Diego Healthcare System published by found that 85.7% of veterans they studied had hearing loss and 47.6% had tinnitus.

This research comes as lawmakers and veterans service organizations debate a critical component of major legislation circulating Congress. Section 108 of the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act (TCAVA) proposes to overhaul VA disability evaluations for sleep apnea and tinnitus, to offset the cost of expansions like the Major Richard Star Act.

The provision would replace the automatic 50% CPAP rating with a tiered system and eliminate standalone 10% ratings for tinnitus.

The new research, published in Ear & Hearing on Sept. 10, studied participants from the VA Million Veteran Program—a nationwide research initiative which investigates how genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors influence veterans’ health.

Hearing loss and tinnitus, a condition where someone perceives sound despite there being no external source, can have a serious impact on people’s quality of life and researchers are seeking to learn more about the conditions to alleviate these issues.

“Tinnitus is the No. 1 service-connected disability for veterans,” Tricia Ashby-Scabis, senior director of audiology practices for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), who was not involved in the study, told U.S. Medicine.

“When comparing the veterans to civilians, the veterans show hearing loss sooner and have more significant hearing loss, particularly at 4K Hz, which is commonly known as an impacted frequency/pitch for noise-induced hearing loss.”

Risk factors of both conditions include exposure to hazardous noise during military training, combat operations and occupational duties and other hazardous noise which are common in a military setting.

How the Study Worked and What it Found

Researchers compared data from 267,395 veterans and 40,912 civilians to look at the prevalence of hearing loss and tinnitus, age and sex-specific audiometric thresholds, word recognition in quiet, and other comorbidities.

The veterans’ researchers included in the study provided their audiometric data to VA clinics between 1999 and 2021. This data included their air conduction thresholds and recorded word recognition score. The civilians were from a clinical cohort at Massachusetts Eye and Ear.

The study also found that men showed greater high-frequency loss while women showed steeper low-frequency declines when they were older.

Tinnitus was reportedly higher among veterans with traumatic brain injuries or concussion, and among veterans with anxiety or depression. They also found that there was no link between tinnitus and tobacco use.

African-American veterans had better hearing thresholds and lower tinnitus prevalence than other races. Asian veterans had greater hearing loss

“This retrospective study is another resource in the arsenal of resources promoting the need for hearing protection for anyone, when they are exposed to loud noise,” Ashby-Scabis said. “Veterans being a primary population whose work provides regular exposure to loud noise, there’s a need for hearing protection use.”