Presbyacusis—hearing thresholds and the ISO 7029

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyse the changes in pure-tone hearing thresholds with age. We studied a random sample of 232 elderly subjects with a battery of audiological tests, including pure-tone audiometry in the conventional and extended high-frequency range, using the normative distributions from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard 7029 for comparison. Sixty otologically normal (ON) subjects were selected for comparative analysis with the unscreened (US) sample, and for description of gender and age group differences. With the use of a mathematical transformation of threshold data, it was found that the ISO 7029 normative alpha coefficient in females may be set too low compared to our sample in the lower frequencies, leading to an underestimation of hearing thresholds in ON females. In our ON sample, hearing thresholds deteriorated with age in the extended high-frequency audiometric range. No gender threshold differences were found, although the prevalence of unmeasurable responses was higher in males at some of these frequencies. The ON screening criteria in ISO 7029 may be unreliable in subjects over 60 years of age, as threshold differences between ON and US subjects were not consistent at any frequency.

Clinical and audiometric features of presbycusis in Nigerians

“…It is therefore reasonable to suggest that although presbycusis affects the high frequency sounds at the outset, the hearing loss extends to the lower frequencies with time resulting in poor speech detection as well as poor speech understanding 22 . On the contrary some studies had found that the lower (including the speech frequencies) were relatively preserved in age-related hearing loss 23,24 .These may be a result of variations in the study populations as many of such studies focused mainly on elderly individuals with hearing impairment and not necessarily presbycusis. Differences in the genetic constitutions of the various populations could also play a part in the factors.…”

Reference hearing thresholds in an extended frequency range as a function of age

“…The dip at 4 kHz seen in the male curve is smaller in the present study than that in the corresponding ISO 7029 (2000) standard. Stenklev and Laukli (2004) found the dip at 4 kHz to be relatively smaller, as well. Also Pearson et al (1995) reported better thresholds at 3 to 8 kHz for men compared to ISO 7029 (2000).…”

“…The majority of authors used the mean as the central measure (Stelmachowicz et al, 1989a;Schechter et al, 1986;Levina et al, 2003;Lee et al, 2012e;Sakamoto et al, 1998;Allen and Eddins, 2010;Hannula et al, 2011;Shim et al, 2009). Stenklev and Laukli (2004) used the median, while some authors calculated both mean and median (Wiley et al, 1998;Ahmed et al, 2001).…”

“…Although there are many studies in the field of highfrequency audiometry, only Stenklev and Laukli (2004) aimed at determining high-frequency hearing thresholds specifically in relation to age, as defined in ISO 7029 (2000). Stelmachowicz et al (1989a) obtained auditory thresholds in the 8 to 20 kHz range from 240 participants aged 10-60 years using a prototype high-frequency audiometer with a miniature microphone suspended in the earpiece; a system which was developed and described by Stevens et al (1987).…”

prevalência da perda auditiva em uma população de idosos da cidade do Rio de Janeiro: um estudo seccional

“…As a polycausal chronic disease it is difficult to define hearing loss in the elderly as a decline in auditory sensitivity caused only by age-related degeneration. 6,20 Rosenhall 18 has suggested the term age-related hearing loss as an alternative expression for presbyacusis, due to a general difficulty in audiological research and practice of defining hearing loss as purely the consequence of natural aging (which could be named pure presbyacusis).…”