The LCS for the minimally responsive patients proved to be reliable and predictive of rehabilitation progress of minimally responsive patients. It may be useful for the interdisciplinary rehabilitation team in planning early individually targeted therapeutic programmes.
The notched-noise procedure of Patterson (1974, Journal of the Accoustical Society of America, 55, 802-809; 1976, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 59, 640-654) was employed in revealing changes in auditory frequency selectivity (FS) in noise-exposed industrial workers in manufacturing plants in which noise levels in the working environment exceeded 90 dB(A). With 4 kHz as the test frequency, both threshold and FS measures were applied to three groups of non-exposed young adults (total N = 61) for reference values and to workers in three different factories, some ('noise-exposed') working in noise levels over 90 dB(A) (total N = 222). In another study involving 185 workers only the FS test was repeated after a work session, and the results are reported on 31 who worked in high noise levels. Pre-work-shift data showed that when thresholds were better than 30-dB HL most FS values were 10 dB or more, while subjects with hearing threshold levels beyond that showed reduced FS. Two post-work-shift studies of 144 ears of the noise-exposed workers showed significant deleterious changes in both thresholds and FS but the relationships were different in the two studies. The findings indicate that the notched-noise test is sensitive to noise-induced auditory damage, even after a single work-shift. Attractive features of the procedure are that it reduces the need for a quiet test environment and that it can be more resistant to testee manipulation or threshold 'learning' effects, often seen in industrial audiometric testing.
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