An Evaluation of Perceptive Hearing Losses in Children, Based on Recruitment Determinations

Abstract

127 children from schools for the hard of hearing suffering from perceptive hearing losses were investigated with view to the phenomenon of recruitment of loudness. Hearing disorders caused by conditions existing pre-natally most often exhibit the presence of recruitment and are presumably of cochlear origin, while those due to postnatal diseases are characterized by the absence of recruitment and appear to be of retrocochlear genesis. In patients with a history of paranatal disease either cochlear or retrocochlear damage may be present.

Surprisingly many patients did not obtain full benefit from hearing aids and were by no means completely rehabilitated at the time they finished school. This was thought partly to be due to the inadequacies of conventional hearing aids when used in patients with perceptive hearing disorders.