February 8, 2008

This week, I saw two individuals who had been referred from the speech and hearing screenings. One of the individuals who had been referred, did not have a hearing loss. After he left the screening it was determined that there was an equipment malfunction and that was the cause of his hearing loss. The other individual did actually have a documented hearing loss. He had thresholds within normal limits in the low frequencies through 2000-3000 Hz, and then sloping to a moderate-severe hearing loss.

I wanted to find an article about successful calibration of audiometric equipment. I didn't find exactly the article that I was wanting, but I did find one on the reference zero for the calibration of air-conduction audiometric equipment using 'tone bursts' as test signals. As discussed in the article, the aim of the study was to determine reference peak-to-peak threshold SPLs for AC sound transducers using groups of tone bursts as test signals. They studied how the repetition rate, type of sound transducer, gender and age of the test subjects, and reference pure tone thresholds effected the results. They found that the results depended mostly on the reference equivalent SPLs for pure tones of each sound transducer.

Reference:
Fedtke, T., and Richter, U. (2007). Reference zero for the calibration of air-conduction audiometric equipment using 'tone bursts' as test signals. International Journal of Audiology (46), 1-10.

If you would like to read this article, please visit the following website:
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=32&hid=115&sid=1ecfa2f9-75bb-401d-8929-1949019a5180%40sessionmgr102