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

We provide three basic recommendations for clinical application based on our analysis. 1). A PTA based metric for hearing ability should include frequencies above 4000 Hz. 2). The data driven cutoff for any PHD/normal hearing is 15 dBHL. When considering greater than moderate PHD, the data driven cutoffs were more variable but estimated at 20-30 dBHL for LF-PTA, 30-35 for PTA4, 25-50 for AF-PTA, and 40-65 for HF-PTA. 3). Clinical recommendations and legislative agendas should include consideration beyond pure tone audiometry such as functional assessment of hearing and PHD.