DETERMINATION OF HEARING-LOSS AND DEGREE OF DISABILITY IN CASE OF PERMANENT NOISE-INDUCED HEARING-LOSS USING SINUS-TONE AND SPEECH AUDIOMETRY

Background: Occupational hearing loss is the most accepted occupationa l disease. The assessment should be conducted in accordance with the ' 'Konigsteiner Merkblatt'' which appeared in the fourth completely revi sed edition in 1996. Determination of degree of disability is mainly b ased on speech audiometry. Adapted complete word understanding is most important. In special cases only sinus-tone audiometry is used for th e assessment. Knowledge about common and uncommon schedules is importa nt for the assessment. Methods and patients: The results of 200 audiom etrical examinations in case of professional hearing loss have been ev aluated with eight different schedules. Four of these schedules for de termination of hearing loss are based on sinus-tone audiometry. Boenni nghaus and Roser's schedule uses speech audiometry under consideration of simple and adapted complete word understanding. Lehnhardt's schedu le uses sinus-tone and speech audiometry for determination of degree o f disability. Further on it is shown that the complete word understand ing is the most important parameter for the quantitative determination of permanent noise induced hearing loss. It is even possible to deter mine the degree of disablement only using the complete word understand ing. For all cases, the eight schedules were used to calculate the ave rage hearing loss and the average degree of disability. Further on it was shown in how many cases - according to each schedule - a degree of disability of less than 10%, 10 to 15%, 20%, and more than 20% was ca lculated. Results and conclusion: Comparing these eight schedules, it was shown that the use of adapted complete word understanding increase s the number of cases with 10% and 20% degree of disability. Using Ros er's schedule of 1980, the number of minimal handicap increases. With the new ''Konigsteiner Merkblatt'' a 10% degree of disability is reach ed more easily than it was previously.