San Antonio, TX, April 1, 2015. At the recent meeting of the American Academy of Audiology, working group K-BCO97.3 of ANSI S3.21 held a joint meeting to discuss the release of a new standard audiogram. Inspired by the 2013 International Journal of Audiology publication by James Jerger, entitled “Why the audiogram is upside down” this group has voted to right the 80 years of wrong, and turn the audiogram upside down again. The effective date for the new standard audiogram is January 1, 2016. ANSI S3.21 chair Soren Stiggarden explains, “Everyone else has always known that big numbers go on top, little numbers go on the bottom—it’s time that we as an industry got with the program.”

The subcommittee also announced that this change will involve abandoning hearing level (HL) measures; hearing thresholds will now be expressed in sound pressure level (SPL). Stiggarden adds, “This will probably delight the thousands of clinical audiologists who could never remember the correction factors from HL to SPL anyway”.

AudiologyOnline interviewed several clinical audiologists who appear to have mixed feelings about the changes. VA audiologist Bill Beck stated, "I work with a lot of noise-induced hearing loss patients. Will the '4K Dip' now be called a '4K Peak'?” Pediatric audiologist Kelly Schmidt questions, “What will we call a Cookie Bite audiogram? Cookie Hump just doesn’t sound right.” Leading audiology software manufacturers have indicated that they are integrating the new audiogram into future releases to ensure compliance with the 2016 deadline.

Stiggarden assures that clinical guidance concerning the use of the new audiogram will be provided, including new terms to replace “ski slope” and “Carhart’s notch". For more information, and to download a sample form, visit www.ansi.org/audiogram