Central Auditory Processing in Elderly People: Preliminary Results Processamento Auditivo Central em Pessoas Idosas: Resultados Preliminares

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Presbycusis entails difficulties in the interpretation of the sound signal with an increased influence in per-ceiving speech in the presence of noise. We intend to study the central auditory processing skills in speech discrimination in noise of elderly people.
METHODS: The sample consists of 20 people, aged from 67 to 92. All the people have undergone an otoscopy, a tympano-gram, a pure tone audiogram and the speech in noise test. This is a descriptive-correlational study.
RESULTS: The audiometric curve shows a statistically significant decline (p < 0.001) with increasing in the frequencies tested, from the frequency of 500 Hz. The left ear presents better results than the right ear, with statistical significance (p = 0.043), only at the frequency of 250 Hz. In the speech in noise test, the results from the left ear showed an average of 21.5% correct answers with a signal/noise relation of 10 dB, with a statistically significant increase (p < 0.001) with signal/noise relation of 15 dB, where the average of correct answers was 26,3%. For the right ear, we obtained an average of 17.3% and 27.85% of correct answers with a signal/noise relation of 10 dB and 15 dB, respectively. There was also a significant increase (p = 0.002) with a signal/noise relation of 15 dB.
CONCLUSION: Considering that the speech in noise test exhibits a mean of less than 50% for both ears, we concluded that the smaller the signal/noise relation the greater the difficulties in understanding the speech. So the audiological evaluation of the elderly should include the peripheral and central evaluation.