title: Tone burst stimulus for auditory brainstem responses: prediction of hearing threshold at 1kHz.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess differences in hearing threshold estimation of four different ABR tone-bursts at 1kHz.
  
  
  METHODS
  Twenty-one (21) ears from 11 subjects were tested with pure-tone audiometry (PTA): 5 ears (24%) were normal hearing, 5 (24%) affected by mild hearing loss, 7 (33%) showed moderate hearing loss and 4 (19%) severe hearing loss. After PTA each subject underwent tone-burst ABR test at 1kHz using a linear gated (L_ABR) or Blackman windowed (B_ABR) stimuli with (nn_ABR) and without ipsilateral notched noise. Stimulation rate and filters settings were unchanged.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Overall correlation between PTA and all ABRs thresholds was high, ranging from 0.84 to 0.94. In normal hearing ears none of the differences was significant, except for those measured with B_nn_ABR, which showed a mean 16dB overestimation of the pure-tone threshold (p<0.05). In mild hearing loss group none of the differences between thresholds were significant. In moderate and severe hearing loss groups significant differences were measured with L_nn_ABR (p<0.05) with a mean 7.5dB underestimation of PTA.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Although very similar, some significant differences were found when considering specific group of patients with different degrees of hearing loss.
authors.affiliation: ENT Division, University of Turin, Italy. Electronic address: federico.dagna@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Federico
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Dagna
authors.affiliation: ENT Division, University of Turin, Italy.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Canale
authors.affiliation: ENT Division, University of Turin, Italy.
authors.forename: Michelangelo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lacilla
authors.affiliation: ENT Division, University of Turin, Italy.
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Albera
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D000328:Adult; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology*; D016057:Evoked Potentials, Auditory, Brain Stem / Q000502:physiology*; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000175:diagnosis; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D012720:Severity of Illness Index
keywords: ABR; Blackman window; Hearing threshold prediction; Notched noise