Trends in Distributions of Hearing Threshold Levels by Ages: A Comparison of the ISO 7029 and Newly Available Country-Specific Data

초록

Hearing thresholds provide essential information and references about the human auditory system. This study aimed to identify changing trends in distributions of hearing threshold levels across ages by comparing the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 7029 and newly available data after publishing ISO 7029. To compare ISO 7029 and newly available hear-ing threshold data after publishing ISO 7029, four country-specific datasets that presented av-erage hearing threshold levels under conditions similar to ISO 7029 were utilized. For frequen-cies between 125 Hz and 8,000 Hz, the deviations of hearing threshold values by ages from the hearing threshold of the youngest age group for each data point were utilized. For frequen-cies from 9,000 Hz to 12,500 Hz, the median threshold information was utilized. Hearing thresh-old data reported after publishing ISO 7029 from the four countries were mostly similar to the ISO 7029 data but tended to deviate in some age groups and sexes. As national hearing threshold trends change, the following ISO 7029 revision suggests the need to integrate hear-ing threshold data from different countries. J Audiol Otol 2024;28(1):1-9

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