Medico-Legal Problems in the Assessment of Deafness

Abstract

From the Department of Otolaryngology (Head: Professor C.-A. Hamberger, M.D.) and the Audiological Laboratory (Head: Assist. Professor G. Lidén, M.D.), University of Göteborg

Methods of estimating hearing disability are of special importance in cases of occupational hearing loss for which compensation is payable. The problem of evaluation of disability caused by hearing loss has two sides. First we have to determine to what extent various audiometric tests are capable of measuring the inability to communicate by means of speech, and second we have the medicolegal problem of translating the measured hearing loss into social and economic disability. The otological assessment of defective hearing which can be performed with the aid of spoken voice-test, pure tone and speech audiometry will be discussed as well as the medicolegal problem of estimating the lower limit of occupationally useful hearing.