High Frequency Audiometry and its importance for the hearing loss early diagnosis

High Frequency Audiometry (9000 до 20000 Hz) is available and can be useful for early diagnosis of hearing impairments and their management and therapy, besides the conventional one (125 до 8000 Hz). The use of high frequency audiometry (HFA) is particularly important for early detection of hearing deviations connected with noise exposure, ototoxic drug treatment, unclear hearing dysfunction – noisy environment speech misunderstanding. The authors present different patient cases with hearing loss etiology, revealed by high frequency audiometry testing, with or without hearing loss diagnosed by conventional audiomerty (125 – 8000 Hz). Based on the published referent threshold values for high frequency audiometry, age divided into groups, we evaluate the obtained results and HFA changes in different hearing disorders – tinnitus, noisy environment speech misunderstanding, hearing loss. That group includes etiologically patients with acute acoustic trauma, noisy occupational environment, treated by chemotherapy, and patients with normal hearing without hearing disorders. The aim of our study is to identify the importance of high frequency audiometry deviations, for the early diagnosis of hearing disorders.