gms | German Medical Science

In the frame of the Audiologie-Initiative Niedersachsen [1] proposals were developed and evaluated for a modernisation of the ENT-medical assessment procedure in the case of a reported job-related noise induced hearing loss. In addition to the proposals for modernisation and extension of the employed speech intelligibility tests it is proposed to calculate predictions of speech intelligibility – based on the pure tone audiogram – by means of the speech intelligibility index [2].

In order to compare the results (e.g. percentage hearing loss) based on the hitherto existing [3] and the newly proposed approaches a computerised assessment toolbox was developed. The toolbox offers nine different ways to calculate the percentage hearing loss, based on measured and predicted values. In addition to the percentage hearing loss, the results window also provides a proposal for the amount of the "reduction in earning capacity" for each way of calculation.

The software toolbox enables a rapid comparison between the percentage hearing losses calculated in different ways. Thereby it can be shown that a change in the choice of the employed test procedures, e.g. the addition of a speech test in noise, can lead to a shift in the final assessment results. Furthermore, it can be shown that in those cases when real speech tests can not be conducted, speech intelligibility predictions might be a good alternative to the calculation of a percentage hearing loss based only on the tone audiogram. The predictions are also a useful supplement to the measured data, since considerable differences between both may indicate an inconsistence in the course of the audiometric investigation.