Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington.
Am J Audiol. 2021 Jun 14;30(2):359-375. doi: 10.1044/2021_AJA-20-00207. Epub 2021 May 4.
Purpose The primary purpose of this report is to further evaluate the Wisconsin Age-Related Hearing Impairment Classification System (WARHICS) scheme for the classification of audiograms obtained from older adults, ages 50-89 years. Method This was a retrospective analysis of data from 11,729 older adults included in two population, one community, and two clinical data sets. To aid in the interpretation of the audiogram classifications, the functional significance of audiogram categories was evaluated using Hearing Handicap Inventory-Screen scores available for 10,330 of these same individuals. Results A WARHICS level could be obtained successfully for 99.5% of the 11,729 audiograms included in these analyses. It was applied successfully to population, community, and clinical samples. WARHICS Level 8 audiograms, corresponding to a broad profound hearing impairment (pure-tone thresholds from 500 to 8000 Hz, all > 80 dB HL), were very rare (.1% prevalence). WARHICS subtypes, designed to identify those with high-frequency notched audiograms or flat audiograms, occurred only 3%-6% of the time, depending on the data set. When compared to the current hearing-impairment grading system of the World Health Organization (WHO), several WARHICS levels fell within a given WHO hearing-impairment grade suggesting a finer grained categorization by the WARHICS. The Hearing Handicap Inventory-Screen scores provided justification for the fine-grained categorization according to the WARHICS. It is also demonstrated that the WARHICS levels could be extended to the classification of audiograms from all adults, regardless of age. Finally, a WARHICS-WHO hybrid classification scheme is proposed for future evaluation. Conclusions Although the WARHICS was developed from a population data set, it was demonstrated here to be applicable to population, community, and clinical data sets for adults aged 50-89 years. The applicability of the WARHICS or a WARHICS-WHO hybrid to population data sets that included younger adults suggests that this classification system has the potential to be applied even more broadly than just to age-related hearing loss.
目的 本报告的主要目的是进一步评估威斯康星州年龄相关性听力障碍分类系统（WARHICS）方案，用于对 50-89 岁老年人的听力图进行分类。
方法 这是对来自两个人群、一个社区和两个临床数据集的 11729 名老年人数据的回顾性分析。为了帮助解释听力图分类，使用可用于其中 10330 名相同个体的听力障碍问卷-筛查分数评估了听力图类别的功能意义。
结果 在这些分析中，成功获得了 11729 个听力图中的 99.5%的 WARHICS 级别。它成功应用于人群、社区和临床样本。与广泛的深度听力障碍（500-8000 Hz 的所有纯音阈值> 80 dB HL）相对应的 WARHICS 级别 8 听力图非常罕见（患病率为 0.1%）。为了识别高频有缺口的听力图或平坦的听力图而设计的 WARHICS 亚型仅在 3%-6%的时间出现，具体取决于数据集。与世界卫生组织（WHO）当前的听力障碍分级系统相比，几个 WARHICS 级别落在给定的 WHO 听力障碍等级内，表明 WARHICS 具有更细的分类。听力障碍问卷-筛查分数为根据 WARHICS 进行细分类提供了依据。还表明，无论年龄大小，都可以将 WARHICS 级别扩展到所有成年人的听力图分类。最后，提出了一个 WARHICS-WHO 混合分类方案以供未来评估。
结论 尽管 WARHICS 是从人群数据集开发而来的，但本研究证明它适用于 50-89 岁成年人的人群、社区和临床数据集。WARHICS 或 WARHICS-WHO 混合对包括年轻成年人的人群数据集的适用性表明，该分类系统具有更广泛应用的潜力，而不仅仅局限于年龄相关性听力损失。
