Audiometric profile in presbycusis.

A group of 40 elderly subjects were evaluated using a variety of audiological tests. Their mean age was 68 years. They had all come to the clinic because of hearing problems. The subjects were selected for this study because no cause of their hearing loss could be found other than presbycusis. They all had the typical moderately sloping pure tone audiogram configuration. The pure tone average hearing loss (PTA, average of 0.5, 1 and 2 kHz) ranged from 11 to 70 dBHL with a median of 40. The average air-bone gap was 3 dB. In addition to pure tone audiometry the following tests were performed: most comfortable loudness level and uncomfortable loudness level for pure tone; stapedius reflex thresholds; speech recognition threshold and maximum speech recognition score in quiet; distorted speech recognition; detection thresholds for frequency and intensity glides of a pure tone; slow evoked cortical potentials in response to frequency and intensity glides of a pure tone. The test results, when compared with those obtained on young subjects with normal hearing and with cochlear lesions, show a mixture of characteristics typical of cochlear, retrocochlear and central lesions.