Abstract
BACKGROUND: The influence of hearing impairment on everyday hearing can be estimated by speech audiometry. There is a great deal of variability in the dependence of word recognition scores on pure-tone hearing loss. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A large clinical database of 28,261 records with complete tone and speech audiometry data was analyzed. The maximum monosyllabic word recognition score was evaluated as a function of hearing loss. Its distribution was analyzed in detail. RESULTS: In a rank analysis, the distribution of percentiles was determined as a function of pure-tone hearing loss up to 80 dB(HL). CONCLUSION: The percentiles of the distribution of maximum word recognition scores for a given pure-tone hearing loss derived here can be used as reference values for a disproportionately high loss of speech recognition.