Auditory brainstem response to chirp stimulus in children with moderate and severe sensorineural hearing loss

Introduction Click auditory brainstem response (ABR) is abrupt, has a rapid onset, and has a broad spectrum nonfrequency‑specific response. ABR needs good neural synchrony, i.e., the greater number of neurons that fire results in a larger response amplitude. Recently, it has been suggested that a chirp stimulus may produce a synchronous response from a large portion of basilarmembrane. The chirp was designed to produce simultaneous displacement maxima along the cochlear partition by compensating for frequency‑dependent traveling time differences. Material and methods In this study, we attempt to find a correlation between pure tone threshold (PTA) and each of the click and chirp ABR thresholds in children with moderate and severe sensory neural hearing loss (SNHL). Results and conclusions Results show that there is a significant correlation between chirp and behavioral PTA and between click and behavioral PTA in children with normal hearing and hearing impaired but not in those with severe steeping SNHL. In steeping SNHL, there was reduced correlation between behavioral PTA and click ABR stimuli. In addition, there was a significant correlation between narrow band‑chirp at 500, 1000 Hz, and 4000 Hz and behavioral PTA in children with normal hearing loss and SNHL but not in those with severe steeping SNHL. In this category, there was a reduction in correlation between behavioral PTA and narrow band‑chirp ABR stimuli.