Clinical application of the bivariate plotting procedure in the prediction of hearing loss.

This study examined the utility of the bivariate plotting approach to reflex-based hearing loss prediction, and introduced a modification to the method which accounts for the effects of mild and high frequency hearing losses. The effect of pure tone sensitivity at 3,000 Hz was found to be of particular importance in the predictive accuracy of the method. When 3,000 Hz is considered, the original concept of the bivariate graph can be further refined into three regions. Here, normal ears and those with substantial hearing loss can be identified with considerable success. A "grey area" between these correctly identifies some degree of loss with 89% accuracy.