COMPARISON OF EAR-CANAL REFLECTANCE AND UMBO VELOCITY IN PATIENTS WITH CONDUCTIVE HEARING LOSS: A PRELIMINARY STUDY

Objective—The goal of the present study was to investigate the clinical utility of measurements of ear-canal reflectance (ECR) in a population of patients with conductive hearing loss in the presence of an intact, healthy tympanic membrane (TM) and an aerated middle ear. We also sought to compare the diagnostic accuracy of umbo velocity (VU) measurements and measurements of ECR in the same group of patients. Design—This prospective study comprised 31 adult patients with conductive hearing loss, of which 14 had surgically-confirmed stapes fixation due to otosclerosis, 6 had surgically-confirmed ossicular discontinuity, and 11 had CT- and VEMP-confirmed superior semicircular canal dehiscence (SCD). Measurements on all 31 ears included pure-tone audiometry for 0.25 – 8 kHz, ECR for 0.2 – 6 kHz using the Mimosa Acoustics HearID system, and VU for 0.3 – 6 kHz using the HLV-1000 laser Doppler vibrometer (Polytec Inc). We analyzed power reflectance |ECR| 2 as