Presbycusis: the need for a clinical definition.

The term presbycusis is vague and needs specific signs and symptoms for its definition. Several types of presbycusis, depending on the type of lesion, have been proposed. This article suggests a working definition of "classic presbycusis," which may be defined as a syndrome involving (1) a bilaterally symmetric sensorineural hearing loss, (2) absent or partial recruitment, (3) negative noise history, and (4) poorer speech discrimination than indicated by pure tones (phonemic regression).