Auditory Evoked Potentials in Comparison to Hearing Thresholds

A normal hearing function requires the intact sound processing of the peripheral ear and the transduction of neural signals to the brain. The hearing diagnosis of the auditory periphery can be done by tympanometry, otoacoustic emissions and auditory evoked potentials even without the reply of test persons or patients. To further improve the diagnostic value of auditory evoked potentials we conducted a clinical study with adults and known hearing thresholds to evaluate the hearing abilities of uncooperative humans by comparison.

The work examines the correlation between pure tone threshold audiograms of normal hearing (^*WHO 0), slightly hard of hearing (WHO 1) and moderately hard of hearing (WHO 2) subjects and the Auditory Steady State Responses (ASSR) at four frequencies (500 Hz, 1 kHz, 2 kHz und 4 kHz). The statistical evaluation is done by the Bland-Altman method, where variances of differences from pairs of measurements are evaluated in dependence of the average value of those pairs. The values of the air-conducted tone threshold audiograms in dB establish the gold standard. The pairs of measured values scaled as dB(HL) are determined by the gold standard and the measured values of ASSR measured particularly by two commercial systems. For an additional comparison the Jewett V thresholds of brainstem evoked response audiometry (BERA) were determined and compared with the gold standard and the ASSR measurements for all ears. *World Health Organization, WHO

Publication History

Article published online:
24 May 2022