Percentage Of Hearing Loss | Why Your Word Recogniton Score (WRS) Is Critical

What is your Percentage of Hearing Loss? Word Recognition Scores are critical to understanding your ability to hear. Dr. Cliff Olson, Audiologist and Founder of Applied Hearing Solutions in Anthem Arizona, discusses the percentage that you should really be discussing when talking about hearing loss percentage.

Website: https://www.DrCliffAuD.com

Clinic Website: https://www.AppliedHearingAZ.com

When most people talk about hearing loss percentages, they are talking about a made up percentage based on the X's and O's on the graph of an audiogram that indicate what level you hear the "beeps" during a hearing test. The problem is, this tells us NOTHING about your actual ability to hear.

The X's and O's only tell us the sensitivity of your hearing. They do not tell us what degree you can understand speech. Therefor, establishing a percentage of hearing loss on this measurement has relatively no meaning.

If someone has normal hearing in the low frequencies and a severe hearing loss in the low frequencies, how can we create a percentage of hearing loss? They have 0% loss in the lows and 80% loss in the highs. You can't average it to 40%, this would make no sense.

Instead, the only percentage you should care about is your word recognition score (WRS). The word recognition score is determined based on the accuracy to which you can understand actual speech when sound is amplified appropriately for your hearing loss based on the X's and O's. An audiologist will say or play a recorded list of single syllable words at an audible level and have you repeat them. The percentage of accuracy will be your Word Recognition Score.

For instance, if you get 20 out of 25 words correct in your right ear, you would have an 80% Word Recognition Score. If you get 10 our of 25 words correct, you would have a 40% word recognition score. Obviously, the higher the percentage, the better hearing ability you have.

WRS is significantly more important than the X's and O's on the graph. It actually indicates how well your ear and brain can interpret sound, and gives us your prognosis for success with hearing treatment. You could have Bad X's and O's with Good WRS, or Good X's and O's with Bad WRS.

What factors determine your WRS?

1. Inner Hair Cells - These are the cells inside of your Cochlea (hearing organ) that transmit sound from the ear to the brain. If these cells die, your WRS score will suffer.

2. Auditory Nerve - If your auditory nerve has a blockage, like a tumor, this sound will not entirely make it to your brain, and if it does, it will be distorted.

3. Brain Function - If your brain loses the capacity to understand speech, this will degrade your Word Recognition Score.

Once your WRS percentage drops it will not recover. There is one way that you can improve this percentage though. If you receive hearing treatment in both ears, it can drastically improve your percentage. This is because your brain has more information to work with. The 80% right ear score and 40% left ear score could result in a 100% binaural score!

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So the next time someone asks you how much hearing loss you have, give them your Word Recognition Score Percentage instead of the fabricated percentage based on the X's and O's.