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Systematic reviews in noise epidemiology. Limitations and chances from a Public Health view

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Systematic reviews can provide valuable evidence to health care and health policy, especially, when clinically important effects of similar magnitude are observed.Whether these strong requirements are met in noise epidemiology is questionable. The medical model does not fully fit with the stress and context driven causal pathways through which the health effects are determined. Heterogeneity of effects is expected due to different background prevalences of vulnerabilities, health and disease. Exposure assessment is more demanding than in related areas (air pollution) due to the need of accounting for perceptional accuracy and sound control options. Furthermore, the applied A-weighted sound level indicators do not correlate in the same way with the actual nervous system arousal for all sound sources. Eventually, most research is of observational nature and randomization and placebo control is largely not feasable. Nevertheless, systematic reviews are indispensable for the further development of noise epidemiology. Furthermore, in order to compare the potential size of the adverse effects of noise on humans at the policy level the calculation of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) is required and depends on high quality systematic reviews. Examples for some of the limitations will be outlined in detail and suggestions for improvements made.

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Document Type: Research Article

Publication date: 21 August 2016

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  • The Noise-Con conference proceedings are sponsored by INCE/USA and the Inter-Noise proceedings by I-INCE. NOVEM (Noise and Vibration Emerging Methods) conference proceedings are included. All NoiseCon Proceedings one year or older are free to download. InterNoise proceedings from outside the USA older than 10 years are free to download. Others are free to INCE/USA members and member societies of I-INCE.

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