[Aggravation of hearing loss (author's transl)].

Functional hearing loss is defined as a syndrome in which audiologic responses are found lacking. Such phenomena are related to capacities of the auditory system which are not fully understood (and include constant functional threshold levels as well as decreasing functional overlay with steeper discrimination scores). Examples are given for symptoms which characterize functional hearing losses, and variable timing for degrees of functional hearing loss described. In addition, etiologic factors are tabulated from a literature survey.