Co-relation of audiometric configurations and auditory difficulties in adults with acquired sensori-neural hearing loss

Introduction: Hearing impairment is one of the most common handicapping problems in this country. There are millions of individuals in this country with varying degrees and types of hearing impairment including children, adults and elders. Hearing is important for speech and language development. Even minor degrees of hearing impairment, especially pre-lingual can affect overall development. Aim: To correlate the different audiogram configurations in adults with acquired sensori-neural hearing loss with the self reported auditory difficulties (which rules out biased reports). Materials and methods: The research design was exploratory and the sampling was purposive. The sampling selection was prospective. All the subjects we selected were according to the following criteria. Inclusion criteria were the patients selected should have minimum 3 years of sensori-neural hearing loss, age range was between 18 to 60 years, pure-tone average (500, 1000 and 2000 Hz) hearing loss was > 25 dB HL and ˂70 dB. Results: Audiogram Pattern wereFlat Pattern, Gradual Sloping, Sharply sloping, Precipitously sloping. Conclusion: Irrespective of audiogram configurations speech intelligibility in noise is most severely affected and discrimination of sound is least severely affected. The patients with similar looking audiograms had similar perception of auditory difficulties (Flat and gradual sloping patterns had similar difficulties. Trough/ saucer and notch also had similar auditory difficulties).