Reassessment of cochlear dead regions in hearing-impaired teenagers with severe-to-profound hearing loss.
The aim of this study was to reassess cochlear dead regions after an interval of twelve months, using the Threshold Equalising Noise (TEN) test. Thirty-four ears of 24 teenagers (mean age of 14 years) with longstanding severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing impairment were tested. Testing was repeated after an interval of 12 months using the same experimental set-up. A total of eight (23.5%) out of 34 ears changed category on retest: this decreased to two (7.1%) out of 27 ears when the inconclusive category was removed from the analysis. In both of these ears (of the same participant) the criteria were met at a single frequency, and the masked threshold was only 10 dB above the TEN level per ERBN. When all of the data were examined on a frequency-by-frequency basis, the instances that changed category ranged from 15 to 51%. The range decreased to between 4 and 34% when the inconclusive category was removed from the analysis.
Munro
Kevin J
KJ
Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK. kevin.munro@man.ac.uk
Felthouse
Catherine
C
Moore
Brian C J
BC
Kapadia
Sarosh
S
D000293:Adolescent; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology; D002648:Child; D003051:Cochlea / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009622:Noise; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology