Bedside Evaluation of Hearing: A comparrative Evaluation of 4 Frequencies

Abstract

Tuning fork tests are commonly performed for bedside evaluation of hearing. Even though these have been used by clinicians for many decades, uncertainty exists as regards the most useful frequency. 128, 256, 512, and 1024 Hz frequencies have been utilized by various studies and 256 and 512 have been found to be more suitable than the other two frequencies.[1,2] There are differences in the perceived utility of these two frequencies as specificity and sensitivity issues have been documented with either of the two, along with falsepositive results. We conducted this study to determine the accuracy of four standard frequencies of tuning forks and using pure tone audiometry as the standard reference to determine the most appropriate frequencies for bedside evaluation of hearing.