A modified pure tone audiometry technique for medico-legal assessment.

Abstract A modified method of pure tone audiometry (PTA) in which the auditory threshold is approached from silence in ascending steps, with tone presentations of 1–4 seconds and interval durations of 1.5–5 seconds was assessed against the British Society of Audiology (BSA) method of PTA in terms of its ability to establish valid thresholds in cases of non-organic hearing loss, prevalent in medico-legal testing. The results reveal that the modified technique of PTA is a valid threshold measurement for honest subjects, and yields less non-organic overlay than the standard method of PTA in cases of non-organic hearing loss.