The Impact of Clinical History on the Threshold Estimation of Auditory Brainstem Response Results for Infants

Purpose This study assesses the impact of patient clinical history on audiologists' performance when interpreting auditory brainstem response (ABR) results. Method Fourteen audiologists' accuracy in estimating hearing threshold for 16 infants through interpretation of ABR traces was compared on 2 occasions at least 5 months apart. On the 1st occasion, ABR traces were presented to the audiologists with no clinical information except for the age of the child. On the 2nd occasion, audiologists were given a full clinical history for the ABR cases. Results The addition of clinical history information had no statistically significant impact on sensitivity, specificity, or accuracy of diagnosis. Although the mean numbers of true-negative and true-positive diagnoses were higher when audiologists were given clinical information, the difference was again not statistically significant. Conclusion This study suggests that if there are circumstances in which case material is incomplete or unavailable, audiologists hav...