WHO defines disabling hearing loss as a 40 dB threshold shift for adults
Evidence
WHO defines disabling hearing loss as a hearing threshold shift of 40 dB in the better hearing ear for adults and 30 dB for children. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2626
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Concrete operational definition of disabling hearing loss with specific dB thresholds.
Related
- Standards accept up to 25 dB of hearing loss as medically normal (similarity 0.84)
- Normal-hearing classification requires thresholds below 30 dB HL at all standard frequencies (similarity 0.81)
- Normal hearing is defined as thresholds below 30 dB across 125-4000 Hz (similarity 0.81)
- Hearing thresholds vary individually but share a common perceptual order (similarity 0.79)
- The 0 dB HL audiometric zero varies across frequency by design (similarity 0.79)
- Hearing-loss risk threshold should drop from 85 to 75 dB for full protection (similarity 0.78)