Acta oto-laryngologica
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Acta oto-laryngologica · Oct 2004
Otologic consequences of blast exposure: a Finnish case study of a shopping mall bomb explosion.
On 11 October, 2002, in the Myyrmanni shopping mall, Vantaa city, Finland, an explosion by a suicide bomber killed 7 people and injured at least 160,44 of whom had ear trauma. We investigated the acute and subacute otologic consequences of the explosion. ⋯ People often think that tinnitus and hearing impairment are naturally occurring phenomena after blast exposure, and if their symptoms resolve they do not seek medical advice. However, some of them may have substantial hearing impairment, particularly at high frequencies. Otologic consultation, or at least an audiometric screening test to exclude hearing impairment, should be performed regardless of symptoms, on the basis of exposure data only. Some symptoms, such as tinnitus and hearing loss, may be permanent consequences of a blast injury and their effect on quality of life may be substantial.
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To examine the response decline that occurs upon repetitive galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) and hampers long-term clinical evaluations. ⋯ The current protocol, using a prehabituating binaural stimulus, showed that reproducible assessment of the GVS over a time course of days to weeks was possible starting from the second test.