Introduction: For a human being, the communication is an essential act in his life and thus, the preservation of auditory capability is vital. With the growth of life expectancy arises the need to understand better elderly people and their constant complaint of not understanding the speech in noisy environment, or in the environment with reverberation. Many writers relate this difficulty to the neurossensorial auditory loss frequently found in these people. However, in many cases this difficulty seems worse than the expected in view of the amount of hearing lost. This fact is not usually detected by conventional tests of tonal and vocal audiometry which provides the data relative to the auditory loss of the individual without describing how this loss affects his life, his day-by-day communication. Aim: To assess and compare the auditory performance of elderly people, both with normal hearing and with neurossensorial auditory loss characteristical of presbycusis, by SSW Test. Study design: clinical prospective randomized. Cases and method: 100 elderly people have been assessed, aged from 60 through 79. Of this number, 50 individuals showed neurossensorial auditory loss characteristical of presbycusis (a study group) and 50 elderly individuals with tonal hearing within normal standards (a control group). Before applying SSW test, these people had undergone anamnesis and audiologic and otorhinolaryngologic evaluation. Conclusion: No statistically relevant difference has been found between both groups. However, there was a tendency of worse performance of the study group under studied conditions. Thus, we found that the neurossensorial auditory loss cannot be considered as determining factor, but rather as an aggravating one in the elderly difficulty to understand the person’s speech.
elderly; speech intelligibility; presbycusis
