[The value of brain-stem audiometry in the selection of hearing aids]

A procedure of hearing aid evaluation by brainstem-evoked response audiometry (BERA) is described. The vailidty of the method is tested with regard to amplitude scattering (51 subjects) and by comparison of hearing aid parameters determined by speech audiometry (205 subjects) respectively by BERA (50 subjects). The results indicate that the influence of intra-individual amplitude variation on the reliability of the procedure is of minor importance only. Comparisons of gain and compression requirement determined by speech audiometry, respectively by BERA, show good agreement, proving the clinical importance and validity of hearing aid selection by BERA. Compression factors of available hearing aids, however, are poorly correlated with estimated compression requirements: only 22% of the hearing aids meet the requirements of about 80% of the subjects.