The individuals rendering the military service are often liable to frequent noise in factories and discharge sounds deriving from firearms and detonations. These sort of undesirable sounds cause lesions the auditory system, which are sometimes irreversible, besides provoking bad effects to the body as a whole. AIM: Evaluating the auditory profiles from a specific group of military personnel, and according to the achieved results to promote the incentive towards the implantation of preventive measures related to auditory losses, such as auditory preservation programs. STUDY DESIGN: Transversal cohort. MATERIAL AND METHOD: Auditory evaluation of 97 individuals working in a military organization, which included interviews, as well as otoscopic and audiometric tests. RESULTS: From the total examined personnel, 38,1% presented audiometric changes supposedly noise-induced since these changes prevailed in the artillerymen, being the unilateral hearing loss predominant. The use of no proper protection equipment was observed in 64,5% of the total examined military personnel. CONCLUSION: The high level of hearing loss occurrences found between the military personnel joined to the absence of proper protection equipment for the exposition to noises, indicate the need of implanting prevention measures to avoid hearing losses among theses professionals.
acoustic trauma; noise-induced hearing loss; military; firearms
