Brain Stem Responses in Patients with Sensorineural Hearing Loss Monaural Versus Binaural Stimulation. The Significance of the Audiogram Configuration

The surface-recorded brain stem electric responses to unfiltered clicks were studied in 60 patients with sen-sorineural hearing loss: 48 patients with bilateral hearing loss which was practically symmetrical on the two sides and 12 patients with asymmetrical hearing loss with pronounced side difference. Among the patients with symmetrical hearing loss, 1/4 had an audiogram of flat loss type, 1/4 had gradually sloping audiograms, 1/4 had steeply sloping audiograms and the last 1/4 consisted of a mixed group with diverse types of audiogram. The patients with asymmetric hearing loss represented various inter-aural combinations of hearing threshold curves. All patients were examined using clicks presented monaurally and clicks presented binaurally, simultaneously, at several stimulation levels. The amplitude was measured as the peak-to-peak value of the Jewett5-FFP7 complex, and the latency was measured to the peak of FFP7. Among the results obtained might be mentioned that binaural stimulation was found to b...