Role of brainstem auditory evoked potential in Forensic Medicine

Abstract

Brainstem Auditory Evoked Potential (BAEP) is an important test used in clinical practice. It is used to diagnose auditory threshold changes and to characterize the type of hearing loss as it does not depends on voluntary response from the subject. Its role in forensic medicine becomes relevant for the assessment of type of hearing loss in medicolegal cases for conductive or sensory neural. It can be used for assessing nature of injuring cases of malingering and pinpointing the neuronal pathway, hearing loss andwhether the victim had hearing loss before the injury or after the injury. This study presents latencies of wave I, II, III, IV and V, interpeak latencies of wave I‐III, I‐V, III‐V and amplitudes of waves I‐Ia, V‐Va and absolute amplitude R in 100 healthy normal hearing in medical students of same age group comprising of 50 females and 50 male for comparison of inter gender difference and for the purpose of establishing normal values. In the present study, it has been concluded that there is highly significant difference in the waves and interpeak latencies III, V and I‐V between females and males. It was also found that the duration of wave I showed statistically highly significant differences and V‐Va showed significant difference between left and right ear in females. It was also found that the duration of wave showed statistically highly significant difference in males.