1996 Volume 39 Issue 2 Pages 135-142
Transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs) were measured and evaluated in 625 human ears with ILO88 Otoacoustic Emission Analyzer to establish clinical criteria of TEOAE for separating normal-hearing from hearing-impaired ears. Firstly, TEOAE parameter (Total Echo Power or Whole Reproducibility) value was compared with pure tone thresholds. However, is was difficult to distinguish precisely between normal-hearing and hearing-impaired ears with TEOAE because many normal ears presented no or low responses of TEOAEs and some impaired ears showed high responses. Therefore, cumulative distributions of sensitivity (normal-hearing ears identified as normal hearing) and specificity (hearing-impaired ears identified as hearing impaired) were constructed and used to calculate the cut-off point of TEOAE parameters. Although the complete cut-off point could not be calculated because of the properties of TEOAE, it is considered that the actual values that correspond to both Total Echo Power≥5.5dB and Whole Reproducibility≥65%, or either Total Echo Power≥9.5dB or Whole Reproducibility≥82.5% can be useful for clinical evaluation of TEOAE.