CORRELATION OF ASSR HEARING THRESHOLDS WITH ABR HEARING THRESHOLDS IN CHILDREN

Abstract

Background: Hearing assessment in neonates, or in older children/teenagers with special needs, is very challenging since a pure tone audiogram is not possible due to lack of co-operation and click-ABRs are not frequency specific. Objectives: To assess the value of auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs) in neonates or in uncooperative children/teenagers and correlate the hearing thresholds derived from them with those derived from ABR. Subjects and Methods: Using ABR and ASSR, the hearing thresholds of 119 children too young to perform behavioral audiometry, and older children or teenagers with special needs (who were unable or unwilling to perform a pure tone audiogram), were assessed. The age range was 1 month to 18 years old with a mean age of 2.7 years and median of 2.3 years; the large majority (106 or 89%) were younger than 5 years. Results: ASSR was found to be a valuable and objective method for hearing assessment as a strong correlation between ABR-derived and ASSR- derived thresholds was found for all frequencies (500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz) with Spearman rank correlation coefficients ranging from 0.83 to 0.87 and high statistical significance (p<0.0001). Conclusion: The reliability of ASSR is supported by the results of the present study which suggest that there is a strong correlation between ASSR and ABR thresholds even at a frequency of 500 Hz.