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Video Script

(Background music playing)

Here’s an image of my most recent audiogram

Were going to take some time and go through this step by step

Hopefully by the end of this video you’ll be able to better understand your child’s audiogram

If you look to the right of the main grid, you’ll see a legend. The legend shows you that the o’s on the main grid represent the softest sounds that can be heard in the right ear and similarly the x’s for the left ear.

The line that is formed across the grid is referred to as the threshold. These are the softest sounds a person can hear across the frequencies without any amplification.

Let’s take a look at the audiogram of familiar sounds compliments of advanced bionics to see what that really means. So the threshold line here goes from about 10 decibels and up in the higher frequencies lands just above 0 decibels, so somewhere around -5 that means that these are the softest sounds the person can hear and therefore all the sounds that fall below this line are accessible to the listener.

(child giggles)

(telephone ringing)

(dog barking)

(electric guitar strumming)

The grey area you see is referred to as the speech banana. The speech banana represents the decibels, meaning the volume, and the frequencies needed to hear or understand speech. Now lets take a look and see what it means if the threshold line is lower on the main grid.

A threshold line which appears between -10 and 25 dbs is classified as a typical hearing level

Should the line appear between 25 and 40 dbs this would be classified as a mild hearing loss

Between 40 and 55 dbs is classified as a moderate hearing loss

Between 55 and 70 dbs is classified as a moderately severe hearing loss

Between 70 and 90 dbs is classified as a severe hearing loss

And lastly between 90 and 120 dbs is a profound hearing loss

Not all threshold lines will appear straight across the grid. For this reason, it is important to review the notes section of the audiogram to see how your audiologist has classified your child’s hearing level. For example, the darker threshold line I’ve placed on the grid may be classified as a slight hearing sloping to a profound hearing loss.

The most important thing to take away from this video is that the further the line appears down the grid, away from the top, the more severe the hearing loss is.

If we return to our audiogram of familiar sounds, we can get a better understanding of what that means for the listener.

Let’s take a look at the red threshold line. Now we have sounds that are appearing above the threshold line, remember the threshold line is the softest sounds the person can hear without amplification. Meaning the sounds that are appearing above that red line are going to be nearly impossible for that person to access without proper amplification.

Thanks for watching. If you have any questions after viewing this video, please feel free to reach out to your APSEA itinerant teacher or your audiologist.