Cochlear versus retrocochlear presbyacusis: clinical correlates

This study reviews audiologic findings on cases of hearing-impaired elderly adults who were matched on the basis of peripheral hearing loss and who were divided into cochlear and retrocochlear groups on the basis of auditory brain stem response (ABR) test results. ABR test results were compared to other audiologic test results that included: (1) word-recognition scores and performance-intensity functions of phonetically balanced word lists; and (2) performance-intensity functions of Synthetic Sentence Identification lists with ipsilateral competing messages. The results of this study indicate that the retrocochlear group performed less favorably than the cochlear group on speech measures known to be sensitive to a retrocochlear site of disorder. This study further emphasizes the complexity of presbyacusis by demonstrating that peripheral hearing loss, alone, cannot account for the totality of the auditory problems that are encountered by elderly listeners.