ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The inner ear problems of Thai priest at Priest Hospital had never been reported previously, so Department of Ear Nose Throat try to correlate the metebotic disorder with inner ear problems. OBJECTIVES: 1) To study the fasting blood sugar (FBS), total cholesterol (T. Chol), low density lipoprotein (LDL), and triglyceride (TG), the factors expected to involve in inner ear problems of priests at Priest Hospital. 2) To compare the FBS, T. Chol, HDL, LDL, and TG of priests with inner ear problems at Priest Hospital. 3) To find the percentage of abnormal from FBS, T. Chol, LDL, and TG. MATERIAL AND METHOD: The study using 83 sampling of priests with inner ear problems and 107 priests as a controlled group. The research instruments used to collect data was the questionnaire which composed of general information, physical, ear-nose-throat and neurological examination, pure tone audiometry, brainstem evoke response audiometry (BERA) and the blood tests:FBS, T. Chol, TG, and LDL. The inner ear problems were composed of: 1) Dizziness 2) Hearing Loss 3) Tinnitus Aurium. The descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data from questionnaires and utilized frequency, percentage, standard deviation (S.D.) and t-test to achieve desired results. RESULTS: Priest at middle age and elderly with inner ear problems had greater FBS and TG than expected values of the control group. CONCLUSION: The middle age and elderly priests who had greater FBS and TG than expected values were sick with inner ear problems that causing dizziness, hearing loss and tinnitus aurium.