The Effectiveness of Auditory Steady-State Response in Diagnosing Nonorganic Hearing Loss

Of the 26 cases of nonorganic hearing loss studied over the last 5 years, 19 cases were women and 7 were men. 18 had bilateral hearing loss and 8 had unilateral, mostly pure tone audiometry showing moderate “horizontal type” hearing loss, together with 2 of low tone hearing loss and 1 of high tone hearing loss. When pure tone hearing level and speech recognition threshold (SRT) were compared, SRT was lower than pure tone hearing level in 56% of ears. In self-recording audiometry by Bekesy, 54% of ears showed Jerger type V, unique in nonorganic hearing loss but not specific. Thresholds of click-evoked ABR and pure tone hearing level deviated among those with horizontal hearing loss, but ABR was not useful in detecting nonorganic low tone hearing loss. In all types of hearing impairment, especially in low tone hearing loss, auditory steady-state response (ASSR), a frequency specific response, was more useful than ABR in diagnosing nonorganic hearing loss.