A 38-year-old gentleman repos of decreased hearing in the right ear for the last two years. On testing with a 512 Hz tuning fork, the Rinne&;s test without masking is negative in the right ear and positive on the left ear. With Weber&;s test, the tone is perceived as louder in the right ear. The most likely diagnosis in the patient is

The characteristics of conductive hearing loss are: 1. Negative Rinne test, i.e. BC > AC. 2. Weber lateralized to poorer ear. 3. Normal absolute bone conduction. 4. Low frequencies affected more. 5. Audiometry shows bone conduction better than air conduction with air-bone gap. Greater the air-bone gap, more is the conductive loss 6. Loss is not more than 60 dB. 7. Speech discrimination is good. Ref: Dhingra 7e pg 31.