Determination and evaluation of clinically efficient stopping criteria for the multiple auditory steady-state response technique.

Objective: The present study aimed at establishing clinically efficient stopping criteria for a multiple 80-Hz auditory steady-state response (ASSR) system.

Methods: In Experiment 1, data of 31 normal-hearing subjects were analyzed off-line to propose stopping rules. Consequently, ASSR recordings will be stopped when (1) all 8 responses reach significance and significance can be maintained for 8 consecutive sweeps; or (2) the mean noise levels were 4nV (if p-values were between 0.05 and 0.1, measurements were extended once by 8 sweeps); or (3) a maximum amount of 48 sweeps was attained; whichever occurred first. In Experiment 2, these stopping criteria were applied on 10 normal hearing and 10 hearing-impaired adults to assess the efficiency.

Results: The application of these stopping rules resulted in ASSR threshold values that were comparable to other ASSR research. Furthermore, preliminary analysis of the response and noise amplitudes demonstrated slightly higher values for hearing impaired than normal-hearing subjects.

Conclusions: The proposed stopping rules can be used in adults to determine accurate ASSR thresholds within a time-frame of about 1h.

Significance: The use of these a priori stopping criteria might assist the clinician in their decision to terminate ASSR recordings.