HEARING-LOSS IN FORMER PRISONERS OF WAR OF THE JAPANESE

OBJECTIVE: To describe the prevalence, degree, and types of hearing lo ss pre-sent in a group of older American veterans who had been prisone rs of war of the Japanese. DESIGN: A descriptive study. SETTING: A Vet erans Affairs university hospital. PARTICIPANTS: Seventy-five male vet erans, mean age 68 (+/- 3.6) years. INTERVENTIONS: Hearing aids were p rescribed for eight veterans. MEASUREMENTS: Subjects were examined, an d pure tone air and bone conduction, speech reception threshold, and s peech discrimination were determined. Results were compared with age- and sex-matched controls from the largest recent American population s tudy of hearing loss. RESULTS: 95% of subjects had been imprisoned lon ger than 33 months. Starvation conditions (100%), head trauma (85%), a nd trauma-related loss of consciousness (23%) were commonly reported. A total of 73% complained of hearing loss, and 29% (22/75) dated its o nset to captivity. Most of those with the worst losses in hearing and speech discrimination were found in this subgroup. When the entire gro up was compared with published age- and sex-matched controls from the Framingham Study, no significant differences were found. CONCLUSIONS: We advocate screening examinations and long-term follow-up of populati ons with similar histories of starvation, head trauma, and torture.