Discussion
In our study, among the employees exposed to noise higher
than 85 dBA, probability of the incidence binaural hearing
impairment in smokers is 5.6 times more than that in nonsmokers.
Therefore, it can be mentioned that cigarette
smoking increases the probability of binaural hearing
impairment in a statistically significant manner.
And among smokers, probability of the incidence of binaural
hearing impairment increases according to increased packyears
of smoking.
Although there are some studies about the effect of cigarette
smoking on occupational hearing loss,[21-30] we could not find
any study on the effect of concurrent exposure to occupational
noise and cigarette smoking on binaural hearing impairment
based on AAO formula.