A 35-year-old woman with unilateral sensorineural hearing loss undergoes an alternate binaural loudness balance (ABLB) test. The affected ear perceives a 10 dB increase in stimulus intensity as being almost as loud as a 40 dB increase in the normal ear. This finding demonstrates:
- A Diplacusis
- B Auditory fatigue
- C Loudness recruitment ✓
- D Phonemic regression
Correct answer: C. Loudness recruitment
Explanation
Recruitment is an abnormally rapid growth of perceived loudness with increasing stimulus intensity, characteristic of cochlear (sensory) hearing loss such as Meniere disease. In this patient a small intensity increase in the diseased ear produces disproportionate loudness growth compared with the normal ear. Diplacusis is distortion of pitch perception, auditory fatigue refers to threshold shift after sustained sound, and phonemic regression describes disproportionately poor word recognition out of proportion to hearing loss in elderly patients.
Reference: Dhingra's Diseases of Ear, Nose and Throat, 7th ed.
High-yield for: NEET PGINI-CETNExTFMGEUSMLEPLABMRCP
Written and medically reviewed by the StethoPrep medical team.