A modified pure tone audiometry technique for medico-legal assessment

A modified method of pure tone audiometry (PTA) in which the auditory threshold is approached from silence in ascending steps, with tone presentations of 1-4 seconds and interval durations of 1.5-5 seconds was assessed against the British Society of Audiology (BSA) method of PTA in terms of its ability to establish valid thresholds in cases of non-organic hearing loss, prevalent in medico-legal testing. The results reveal that the modified technique of PTA is a valid threshold measurement for honest subjects, and yields less non-organic overlay than the standard method of PTA in cases of non-organic hearing loss.