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What is loudness recruitment in sensorineural hearing loss?

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In the context of audiology, loudness recruitment is a phenomenon associated with sensorineural hearing loss that involves an abnormal rate of loudness growth.12

While individuals with this type of impairment have raised hearing thresholds—meaning they may not hear faint sounds at all—they often perceive more intense sounds as being just as loud as a healthy ear would. This results in a disproportionately rapid increase in the perception of loudness for even small increases in sound intensity.21

Because the dynamic range between the threshold of hearing and the level at which sound becomes uncomfortable is significantly reduced, this condition has important implications for clinical practice. Specifically, it necessitates the use of nonlinear amplification in hearing aids, where soft sounds are amplified more than loud sounds to accommodate the patient's narrowed range of comfortable hearing.12