title: Assessment of the American Medical Association guide to the evaluation of binaural hearing impairment.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess the American Medical Association (AMA) guide to the evaluation of binaural hearing impairment (BHI) as a procedure for estimating severity of hearing loss from audiograms.
  
  
  METHODS
  The BHIs of Australian war veterans were calculated from their hearing threshold levels (HTLs) and compared with their scores on a hearing questionnaire, the hearing measurement scale (HMS).
  
  
  METHODS
  The HTLs of 282 Australian war veterans were measured at frequencies from 0.25 to 8 kHz and scores on the HMS were obtained from 154 of those veterans.
  
  
  RESULTS
  No grounds could be found for altering the frequencies included in the average HTL or the high fence of 92 dB HL used in calculating the monaural hearing impairments (MHIs) of the veterans, and no grounds could be found for altering the ratio of 5:1 used in determining the BHI from the MHIs of the better and worse ears. However, agreement between HMS score and BHI was improved by reducing the low fence used in calculating MHI from 25 to 15 dB HL.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A modified version of BHI provided an improved procedure for estimating severity of hearing loss from audiograms but would not be suitable for compensation purposes.
authors.affiliation: National Acoustic Laboratories , Sydney , Australia.
authors.forename: J H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Macrae
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001307:Auditory Perception; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D001315:Australia; D006309:Hearing; D006311:Hearing Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D006320:Hearing Tests; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D019986:Persons with Hearing Disabilities / Q000523:psychology*; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012955:Societies, Medical; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014728:Veterans; D055815:Young Adult