Evaluation of Psychoacoustic Annoyance of Kidney Stone lithotripsy by Using Sound Qualitive Metrics

Abstract

Introduction:Human exposure to noise in the workplace can lead to wellknown effects and complications, such as temporary and permanent hearing loss and adverse physiological and psychological effects. The physiological and psychologicap effects of sound often appear gradually on humans, and in the long term, its negative consequences, such as mental and physical fatigue, stress and anxiety, dizziness, headache, anger, aggressive behavior, violence and lack of concentration, sleep disorder, decrease Work efficiency, temporary and even permanent disability occurs. So that even low volume can have negative effects on productivity and work capacity. noise annoyance is another issue related to sound that has nothing to do with the health of users and is only a measure to express the level of comfort and convenience of users. Hospitals are one of the most important service environments where noise annoyance can have a significant impact on the health of society. In the evaluation of sound comfort, quantitative parameters such as sound pressure level cannot be considered a good measure of the hearing sensation of those who are exposed to noise, for this purpose, sound quality measures are needed to express the subjective feeling of peoppe. For this purpose, sound quality criteria such as loudness, sharpness, roughness, and fluctuation Strength are of interest. Psycho-acoustic science describes the relationship between sounds or the range of physical characteristics of noise and mental perception related to this range. Evaluation of noise pollution in kidney Stone pithotripsy is very important for control. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to determine the level of annoyance caused by the sound of the kidney Stone pithotripsy based on the sound quality criteria. Method: In this study, after applying the inclusion criteria, the Weinstein questionnaire was used to determine the sensitivity to noise and the noise annoyance questionnaire was used to determine the level of annoyance, and these questionnaires were completed by the employees of the kidney stone lithotripsy. Then, using a PreSonus PRM1 microphone and the sound of the kidney stone lithotripsy in the work shift, it was recorded and stored in the laptop using the Voice Recorder software, and then the saved sound was analyzed by the Pab View software, and the sound quality parameters were obtained. By using mathematical relations and psycho-acoustic model, the amount of psychoacoustic annoyance of this device was calculated. Finally, the relationship between the subjective results, i.e. the data coppected from the questionnaire tools, and the objective results, i.e. the measured data related to the sound quality criteria, were determined. The results were analyzed with IBM SPSS Statistics26 software. Results: The statistical analysis of demographic information, Weinstein and noise annoyance questionnaires in the studied hospitals showed that there is no significant relationship between the age of the participants in the study and the level of noise annoyance and also between the age of the people and the level of noise sensitivity. Regarding the psycho-acoustic annoyance index, no significant relationship was found between sound and this index. Sound sensitivity has a mean and standard deviation of 63.16±11.51, and the lowest sound sensitivity score is 39 and the highest is 83. As a result, the participants in this study are in the middle range (63) of sound sensitivity. they had. Regarding the level of annoyance, 41.7% of the employees were "moderately" and 38.9% were "extremely" annoyed by the sound. The effect of power changes on the sound quality criteria of the device showed that with the increase in the power of the device, the sound quality criteria also have an increased. This increase in loudness is impressive. Regarding the average score of psychoacoustic annoyance from app hospitals, the lowest amount of psycho-acoustic annoyance was 83.18 and the highest was 105.05. The relationship between subjective and objective results using linear regression was significant in all device powers as well as the average powers, so that for one unit increase in the average psychoacoustic model sound annoyance score, the sound sensitivity score changed by 0.64. Also, a positive and significant linear relationship was found between the amount of noise annoyance and the amount of noise annoyance of the psycho-acoustic model (p < 0.001), so that for one unit increase in the average score of the noise annoyance of the psycho-acoustic model, the score of the amount of noise annoyance was 0.06 0 changed. Conclusion: This research showed that the psycho-acoustic annoyance caused by the noise of the kidney Stone llithotripsy increases with the increase in the quality parameters of the noise, and on the other hand, the level of sensitivity to noise and noise annoyance also increases in the employees of these units, and finally it can be concluded that Psychoacoustic annoyance can be a good indicator to predict the level of annoyance caused by exposure to noise.