The whispered voice as a screening test for hearing impairment.

THERE are many occasions when a clinician may wish to 1 test the hearing of a patient to confirm that an impairment is present. There are several ways that this might be done but perhaps the easiest and most relevant is to use free-field voice testing. Voice testing of hearing was the standard method of assessing a person's ability to hear until pure-tone audiometers became widely available in the 1940s. Subsequently, voice testing was condemned as inconsistent and outdatedl2 and, although this may be the case in comparison with audiometric testing, there remains a need for a reproducible screening test. With the advent of reconstructive middle-ear surgery and the availability of behind-the-ear National Health Service hearing aids, the majority of individuals with a bilateral hearing impairment worse than 30 dB (hearing level) can now be successfully helped. However this is seldom the case for those who have a monaural threshold better than 30 dB (hearing level). The object of this study was to assess whether a simple free-field voice test of hearing could reliably detect those individuals who might benefit from referral to an otolaryngology department.