The Use of Heart Rate in the Audiological Evaluation of Nonverbal Children – Part I. Evaluation of Children at Risk for Hearing Impairment

Three methods for assessing response levels to auditory stimuli were compared in a population of pre- and nonverbal children at risk for hearing impairment: heart rate change, cortical evoked potentials, and conventional audimetry. Heart rate responses were obtained at approximately the normal threshold of hearing in some patients. In subjects in whom hearing impairment was established by conventional audiometry, response thresholds obtained using heart rate change reflected hearing loss, and were approximately the same as the audiological evaluation. These results suggest that heart rate change averaged over 5 stimulus presentations is a sensitive indicator of auditory threshold.

Heart rate audiometer - auditory evoked potentials - hearing impairment