Determinants of speech-hearing disability in King-Kopetzky syndrome

King-Kopetzky syndrome is characterized by auditory disability with a clinically normal hearing threshold. The main reported disability is hearing speech in the presence of background noise. The degrees of speech-hearing disability in patients with King-Kopetzky syndrome have been investigated with the use of the Social Hearing Handicap Index (SHHI), and the relationships between the SHHI scores and a number of physiological, psychoacoustical and psychological factors determined in 109 patients. The significantly higher (worse) SHHI scores in patients with King-Kopetzky syndrome indicate that this group suffer a considerable degree of speech-hearing disability. In our study, the main findings are that some psychological factors, performance of the sentence in noise test and auditory thresholds are significantly correlated with the SHHI scores. We were unable to find any relationships between the SHHI and frequency resolution or EOAEs. In a multiple stepwise regression, somatic anxiety and the performance of the sentence in noise test are the significant predictors of SHHI scores. These two variables appear to be the main determinants of speech-hearing disability in King-Kopetzky syndrome.