ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The stacked auditory brainstem response (SABR) was introduced to collect the low frequency information using the conventional ABR. The cochlear hydrops analysis masking procedure (CHAMP) was developed to discriminate an active Meniere's disease from others. This investigation was aimed to provide data through analyzing age and gender effects of SABR and CHAMP in Korean normal adults. SUBJECTS AND METHOD: Normal hearing Korean adults (34), aged 30 to 67 participated in this study. The number of subjects for different age groups of 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s were 10, 9, 8, and 7, respectively. SABRs were tested at 60 dB nHL stimuli level of constant noise and masking clicks of high pass noise ranging at 8, 4, 2, 1 and 0.5 kHz. CHAMP responses were simply obtained for further analysis of SABR measurements. SABR amplitude, SABR interaural difference (IAD), CHAMP latency delay, and CHAMP complex amplitude ratio were analyzed and compared. RESULTS: The mean SABR amplitude was 683 nV showing statistical difference for age but not for gender effects. The mean SABR IAD was 6.4% with no statistical significances for both age and gender effects. The mean CHAMP latency delay and complex amplitude ratio were 4.47 ms and 0.97 with statistical significance for the effects of age but not for gender. CONCLUSION: The results agreed with the foreign data in SABR and CHAMP except for the age effect of complex amplitude ratio. In order to improve clinical efficacy, investigations should be performed with more and diverse participants.