Consensus Statement

M. Patrick Feeney, Lisa L. Hunter, Joseph Kei, David J. Lilly, Robert H. Margolis, Hideko Heidi Nakajima, Stephen T. Neely, Beth A. Prieve, John J. Rosowski, Chris A. Sanford, Kim S. Schairer, Navid Shahnaz, Stefan Stenfelt, Susan E. Voss

The participants in the Eriksholm Workshop on Wideband Absorbance Measures of the Middle Ear developed statements for this consensus article on the final morning of the Workshop. The presentations of the first 2 days of the Workshop motivated the discussion on that day. The article is divided into three general areas: terminology; research needs; and clinical application. The varied terminology in the area was seen as potentially confusing, and there was consensus on adopting an organizational structure that grouped the family of measures into the term wideband acoustic immittance (WAI), and dropped the term transmittance in favor of absorbance. There is clearly still a need to conduct research on WAI measurements. Several areas of research were emphasized, including the establishment of a greater WAI normative database, especially developmental norms, and more data on a variety of disorders; increased research on the temporal aspects of WAI; and methods to ensure the validity of test data. The area of clinical application will require training of clinicians in WAI technology. The clinical implementation of WAI would be facilitated by developing feature detectors for various pathologies that, for example, might combine data across ear-canal pressures or probe frequencies.