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Review: self report of hearing loss and the whispered voice test are useful for screening for hearing impairment

Clinical impact ratings GP/FP/Primary care Internal medicine Geriatrics

Key Words: hearing loss • hearing tests

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

METHODS
Data sources: Medline, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica (1966 to April 2005), bibliographies of relevant articles and a clinical skills textbook, and experts in the field.

Study selection and assessment: English language studies that evaluated the accuracy or precision of bedside screening questions or physical examination manoeuvres for hearing impairment in symptomatic and asymptomatic people 16 years of age. 24 studies (n = 12 645) met the selection criteria. The tests evaluated included a self report screening question (eg, "Do you feel you have a hearing loss?"); the Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly, screening version (HHIE-S), a 10 item self administered questionnaire measuring the social and emotional effects of hearing problems (range of scores 0–40); the Weber and Rinne tuning fork tests; the whispered voice test; and the audioscope. The reference standard was pure tone audiometry with thresholds ranging from 25–45 dB.

Outcomes: pooled positive and negative likelihood ratios (LRs).

MAIN RESULTS
Pooled LRs . . . [Full text of this article]

Paul Glasziou, MBBS, PhD

University of Oxford
Oxford, UK