Collapsing ears and acoustic reflex measurement with circumaural ear cushions

Ears that collapse from audiometer ear cushion pressure may show elevated stapedial reflex thresholds. In such cases, erroneous judgments about the status of a patient's hearing are possible. Experiments on 15 normal ears suggest that the use of a circumaural ear cushion on the impedance audiometer headset is an effective method of eliminating outer ear closure and the resulting spurious thresholds, when the proper correction values by frequency are applied to the audiometer dial reading. In this study, correction values for reflex-eliciting stimuli are established and their use in a child with collapsing ears is reported.