Figure 4
From: Human Cochlear Histopathology Reflects Clinical Signatures of Primary Neural Degeneration
Primary neuronal loss correlates significantly with elevated audiometric thresholds and poor word recognition scores. Confidence intervals are represented as shaded areas around regression lines and are measures of 95% precision for predicted slopes and intercepts. (a) Linear mixed regression model correlating total neuronal loss (% of age-based mean) with audiometric thresholds (dB HL) within patients at each individual test frequency (n = 30 ears). Solid lines, linear regressions per audiometric test frequency (Freq); data points, individual threshold observations color-coded by audiometric test frequency. Conditional f test with Kenward-Rogers correction for degrees of freedom reveals that slopes of these lines are significantly different than zero (p < 0.001), but not significantly different from one another (p = 0.10). (b) Averaging across all six audiometric test frequencies yields a mean threshold increase of 6.0 dB HL per 10% total neuronal loss; shaded area, 95% confidence interval. (c) Total neuronal loss (% of age-based mean) correlates with poor word recognition (n = 15 ears). Mean word recognition score decreases by 6.8% per 10% total neuronal loss (r = −0.644).
