Severe Presbycusis
Significant age-related loss across the full hearing range. Even one-on-one conversation in a quiet room is hard to follow, and group settings are largely inaccessible without hearing aids. At this level, hearing aids alone may not restore enough clarity.
Summary
- Pure-tone average (PTA) · Left ear
- 63 dB
- Pure-tone average (PTA) · Right ear
- 63 dB
- Most loss at
- 6 kHz · 90 dB
- Severity
- Severe
Pure-tone average is the quietest tone each ear can just hear, averaged across three pitches central to speech (500 Hz, 1 kHz, and 2 kHz). It’s the single number U.S. audiologists use to sum up an audiogram. 15 dB or lower is typical hearing, and every 10 dB higher means sounds need to be about twice as loud to be heard. Internationally, the World Health Organization averages four pitches, adding 4 kHz, so where high pitches have more loss its number comes out higher.
Degree of the worse ear, averaged over all eight frequencies, on the scale used by U.S. audiologists (ASHA)
Thresholds by frequency
| Hz | L | R |
|---|---|---|
| 250 | 40 | 40 |
| 500 | 50 | 50 |
| 1k | 65 | 65 |
| 2k | 75 | 75 |
| 3k | 80 | 80 |
| 4k | 85 | 85 |
| 6k | 90 | 90 |
| 8k | 90 | 90 |