Chronic effects of exposure to high-intensity blasts: Results of tests of central auditory processing

Patients who have recently experienced high-intensity blasts are more likely to perform abnormally on tests developed to be sensitive to deficits of central auditory processing than were age- and hearing-matched individuals without blast exposures. Here, a group of 59 participants was recruited, 30 of whom were exposed to high-intensity blasts between 4 and 11 yr prior to testing and did not participate in the previous study, along with 29 controls similar in age and hearing thresholds to the blast group. All were tested on a set of behavioral tests that were used in the previous study. Abnormal performance was measured with reference both to published normative data and to the average performance of the control group. Members of the blast-exposed group were again found to be significantly more likely to perform in the abnormal range than were the members of the control group. Because the patients in this study were tested a minimum of 4 yr after blast exposure, these results suggest that for some of those exposed, problems processing auditory information may be a chronic effect of blast exposure even in the absence of significant peripheral hearing loss.