Table 1.

Speech reception thresholds and speech discrimination scores with and without PPE use

Parameter	Ears (n)	With or without PPE	Mean value	SD	P-value
SRT (dB)	40	Without PPE	20.375	8.9	<0.0001
		With PPE	32.75	10.4
SDS (%)	40	Without PPE	100	0	<0.0001
		With PPE	93.2	2.4

PPE = personal protective equipment; SD = standard deviation; SRT = speech reception threshold; SDS = speech discrimination score