The pure-tone hearing thresholds of otologically healthy 14-year-old children

The mean pure-tone air conduction (AC) and bone conduction (BC) hearing thr esholds (HT) of 534 randomly selected, caucasian, white, urban children wit h normal otoscopy, otomicroscopy and impedance audiometry. i.e. normal midd le ear function. are presented here. Children with pathological middle car findings or abnormal impedance audiometry were excluded. The average age wa s 13.8 years, SID 0.5, at the date of examination. The mean air conduction thresholds varied between 0.6 dB at I kHz and 9.9 dB at 6 kHz, and the bone conduction thresholds varied between -1.1 dB at 0.5 kHz and 1.1 dB at 4 kH z, The pure-tone average (PTA) (the average of AC hearing thresholds of 0.5 , 1 and 2 kHz) or all ears was 1.5 dB. Ninety to ninety-eight per cent of p ure-tone AC hearing thresholds at frequencies of 0.5-4 kHz were between -5 dB and 10 dB. The distributions are presented and compared.