Real-ear measurements in conductive hearing loss: discrepancies between probe-tube microphone measurements and sound field test results.

This study was designed to investigate earlier observations that probe-tube microphone measurements of insertion gain overestimates the functional gain received from hearing aids by users with significant conductive hearing losses. This was originally thought to be due to artefacts in the probe-tube measurement caused by middle ear pathology, but is now believed to be the result of the bone conduction stimulation of the ear exposed to high intensities of airborne sound during sound field threshold measurements. Since the functional gain must relate to the true aided benefit in such cases, these findings suggest that probe-tube microphone measurements in ears with significant air-bone gaps should be interpreted with caution.