[Assessment of social hearing with a questionnaire in relation to average hearing loss]

In 86 patients with sensorineural hearing loss we checked if the measuring results obtained by conventional audiometric procedures correlate with the subjective impression of hard hearing ascertained via a special questionnaire. For this purpose we compared the average hearing loss (500, 1000, 2000 Hz) of the puretone audiogram with the results obtained via the questionnaire developed by v. Wedel and Tegtmeier for assessing the social hearing handicap (SHH). We can see that there is good correlation between the SHH index values and the average hearing loss with frequencies of 0.5, 1.2 kHz in pancochlear perception hearing loss, whereas in patients with basocochlear perception hearing loss the SHHI cannot be calculated with the help of the puretone audiogram, nor will a widening of the frequency range up to 6 kHz lead to a better correlation between the average hearing loss and SHHI.