Defining Hearing Loss Severity Based on Pure-Tone Audiometry and Self-Reported Perceived Hearing Difficulty: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Background:  There is a well-known metric to describe average/normal vision, 20/20, but the same agreed-upon standard does not exist for hearing. The pure-tone average has been advocated for such a metric.

Purpose:  We aimed to use a data-driven approach to inform a universal metric for hearing status based on pure-tone audiometry and perceived hearing difficulty (PHD).