King-Kopetzky syndrome is characterized by auditory disability with a clinically 
normal hearing threshold. The main reported disability is hearing speech in the 
presence of background noise. The degrees of speech-hearing disability in 
patients with King-Kopetzky syndrome have been investigated with the use of the 
Social Hearing Handicap Index (SHHI), and the relationships between the SHHI 
scores and a number of physiological, psychoacoustical and psychological factors 
determined in 109 patients. The significantly higher (worse) SHHI scores in 
patients with King-Kopetzky syndrome indicate that this group suffer a 
considerable degree of speech-hearing disability. In our study, the main 
findings are that some psychological factors, performance of the sentence in 
noise test and auditory thresholds are significantly correlated with the SHHI 
scores. We were unable to find any relationships between the SHHI and frequency 
resolution or EOAEs. In a multiple stepwise regression, somatic anxiety and the 
performance of the sentence in noise test are the significant predictors of SHHI 
scores. These two variables appear to be the main determinants of speech-hearing 
disability in King-Kopetzky syndrome.