Predictive value of intraoperative brainstem auditory evoked responses in surgery for conductive hearing losses.

Objective: To assess the efficacy of intraoperative brainstem auditory evoked responses (BAER) in predicting postoperative hearing improvement in surgery for conductive hearing loss.

Study Design: A prospective study of consecutive patients undergoing surgery for conductive hearing loss under general anesthesia by a single surgeon.

Setting: A tertiary care university affiliated medical center.

Patients: All patients undergoing surgery for conductive hearing loss by the senior author between June 25, 1993 and March 20, 1995.

Interventions: Pre- and postreconstruction intraoperative BAERs; pre- and postoperative pure tone and speech audiometry.

Main Outcome Measures: Changes in audiometric pure tone air-conduction thresholds, bone-air gaps (BAG), and speech reception thresholds (SRT), compared with changes in BAER wave five (V) latencies.

Results: A decrease in the wave V latency on the intraoperative BAER correlates significantly with improvement in postoperative pure-tone air-conduction, BAG, and SRT using chi 2 and linear regression analyses.

Conclusions: Improvement in intraoperative BAER correlates with postoperative hearing improvement in surgery for conductive hearing loss done under general anesthesia in our population.