[Evoked otoacoustic emission behavior in clinical sensorineural hearing loss]

The present study revealed a significantly higher EOAE incidence in subjects with sensorineural hearing loss of unknown causes (81.82%) than in those with tumor of the cerebellopontine angle (42.86%), sudden deafness (41.38%) and equilibrium disorders (50%). EOAEs had been detected in some ears with mean pure-tone hearing threshold across 0.5, 1 and 2 kHz above 40 dB HL. For subjects with sensorineural hearing loss of unknown causes, the correlation coefficient between the mean hearing threshold and EOAE detection threshold amounted to only 0.40. It seems that EOAEs are related primarily to the nature of hearing loss rather than simply to pure-tone audiometric behavior.