Brainstem response audiometry as subjective and objective test for neurological diagnosis.

Abstract

This investigation is a preliminary report in which the auditory brainstem response (ABR) cross-correlation evaluation method is applied to a group of patients with a definite diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. The analysis of the results shows that the cross-correlation procedure is able to detect the ABR abnormalities with at least the same degree of accuracy as the abnormality identification made by visual inspection. Furthermore, discriminant analysis of the cross-correlations results shows that by using the Z-maximum correlation from only two derivations it is possible to separate the multiple sclerosis group from the normal group with only two failures. Since the cross-correlation procedure allows the evaluation of the ABR waveform, avoiding the unsatisfactory limitations of subjective identification, this contribution supports the idea that the cross-correlation procedure can be a clinically promising method for objective evaluation of the ABR.