Reliability Of Absolute Suppression Amplitude Of Transient Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions For Global And Half-Octave Frequency Bands In Children And Adults

• Published in: Canadian journal of speech-language pathology and audiology Vol. 46; no. 1; p. 25
• Main Authors: Swamy, Shreyank P, Yathiraj, Asha
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ottawa Canadian Association of Speech, Language Pathologists and Audiologist (Assn 01.01.2022
• Subjects: Acoustics; Adults; Amplitude (Acoustics); Children; Methods; Noise; Stimulation
• ISSN: 1913-200X; 1913-2018

The study aimed to investigate whether the reliability of absolute suppression amplitude of transient evoked otoacoustic emissions was similar for half-octave frequency bands and global values in children and adults. This study is a sequel to Swamy and Yathiraj's (2019) investigation, exploring short-term reliability evaluated at two time points (~4 hours apart) in 15 children and 15 adults. Transient evoked otoacoustic emissions without and with contralateral acoustic stimulus were measured using three methods. In Methods I and II, interleaved white noise having durations of 2 s on-off and 10 s on-off were used respectively; in Method III, continuous white noise was used as the contralateral acoustic stimulus. A significant main effect of methods was observed for absolute suppression amplitude. Method III had the highest absolute suppression amplitude, followed by Method II and Method I. There was no main effect of recordings and age. Reliability was higher for Method III than Methods I and II on three statistical measures (i.e., Cronbach's α, standard error of measurement, and Bland-Altman plots). Reliability was higher for global absolute suppression amplitude in all three methods compared to the half-octave frequency bands. For the half-octave frequency bands, reliability varied from poor to good for Methods I and II, and good to excellent for Method III. Further, a greater number of participants achieved the smallest detectable difference amplitude in Method III in both age groups. Based on the findings, Method III (continuous contralateral acoustic stimulus) is recommended to measure contralateral suppression of transient evoked otoacoustic emissions in clinical set-ups.