Auditory Brainstem Responses evoked by Swept-tone in Unilateral Sensorineural Hearing Loss Patients

摘要

In the clinical setting, Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR) based on click sound is widely used to evaluate the auditory function of unilateral sensorineural hearing loss patients. However, based on the delay characteristics of the cochlear basilar membrane, click sound cannot synchronously excite the cochlea which finally causes the attenuation and distortion of ABR. To solve the abovementioned problem, a swept-tone stimulus was designed based on the delay characteristics of the cochlear basilar membrane to compensate for the defect of the click stimuli. The performance of swept-tone ABR was systematically investigated in the clinic and was compared to the click-based ABR to further prove its advantages. Results showed that the swept-tone ABR had better morphology than ABR evoked by click stimulus. When considering the amplitudes of wave V, the swept-tone ABR showed greater amplitude than the click ABR. Moreover, the correlation coefficient of different averaging times indicated that the swept-tone ABR could achieve higher related waveform with less time, which contributed to saving measurement time in the clinical setting. These results suggest that the swept-tone method can serve as a good candidate of ABR stimulus in the clinical setting to achieve a more accurate diagnosis and realize faster auditory function evaluation.