Influence of smoking on human hearing - literature review.

Objectives: Smoking is a strong addiction, that affects a huge number of people worldwide, including the young ones. Due to composition of cigarette smoke, which contains nicotine and other chemical substances, lots of harmful effects on human health were described. Apart from the influence on other organs smoking is associated with hearing loss.

Methods: The literature review was conducted using PubMed and the combination of the following words: smoking, hearing impairment and hearing loss.

Results: The total number of 585 articles published in the recent 10 years were analysed. The review results show a strong association of hearing loss with smoking, both active and passive. As the main reason for hearing loss, a damage to outer hair cells was identified. Hearing loss in such cases is basically sensorineural and usually affects high frequencies. It was also observed that the risk of hearing loss increases with time of smoking. Smoking cessation reduces the risk of hearing loss associated with smoking. This article is a review of the literature that summarizes the results of studies aiming to analyse the influence of smoking on human hearing.

Conclusions: As smoking causes serious health problems, public health policies in societies should promote primary prevention as well as smoking cessation (secondary prevention) to diminish the total burden of healthcare systems.