Hearing Thresholds at High Frequencies: Age as a Predictor of Values

Abstract

Introduction The audiological evaluation has the main objective of determining the integrity of the auditory system. Pure tone audiometry is a standardized behavioral procedure that aims to investigate auditory thresholds to describe auditory sensitivity. Despite being recognized since the mid-1960s, high frequency audiometry is still little used and explored in clinical practice, and its use is more considered as an audiological monitoring tool or as a research tool. Objective To analyze the audiological thresholds of high frequency audiometry in normal hearing individuals, and to verify the predictive capacity of age in the auditory thresholds of high frequency audiometry. Methods This is a retrospective, cross-sectional, and quantitative study that was approved by the Research Ethics Committee under number 5.039.583/21. The procedures were: clinical evaluation, pure tone audiometry, acoustic immittance measurements, and high frequency audiometry. All data collected from the exams were tabulated in an Excel spreadsheet and analyzed using appropriate statistical tests in the Statistical Package Social Sciences software. Results A total of 980 medical records were analyzed. The right and left ears presented similar tonal hearing thresholds for the frequencies of 12 kHz and 16 kHz. The threshold variance of 29.8% in the 12 kHz frequency can be explained by the variance of age, while, for the frequency of 16 kHz, this percentage is of 46.4%. Conclusion For 12 kHz hearing thresholds, an increase of 1 year leads to a 0.66 dBHL increase in hearing threshold. For 16 kHz hearing thresholds, an increase of 1 year leads to a 1.02 dBHL increase in hearing threshold.