This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

EDWIN L. HARLESS, PHD
Winston-Salem, NC

Arch Otolaryngol. 1983;109(4):275.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—In the article entitled "Asymptomatic Schwannoma of the Cochlear Nerve" by Ayani and Shea, published in the August 1982 ARCHIVES (108:501-503), a maximum word discrimination score of 70% was described as a surprising result. Another comment was that the score was contaminated by the possibility of crossover.

In the preoperative audiogram described, the bilateral mixed hearing loss of severe degree constitutes a classic masking dilemma in the assessment of word discrimination.¹ The use of effective masking in suprathreshold tests, including routine word discrimination tests, is indicated similar to the use of masking in puretone and speech threshold audiometry.²

I recommend the following audiometric technique for assessing word discrimination in bilateral mixed hearing loss with substantial air-bone gap.

(1) Obtain an unaided phonetically balanced maximum score. (2) Despite the high probability of overmasking (ie, crossover of the masking noise), obtain a second phonetically balanced maximum score . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?