Predicting directional hearing aid benefit for individual listeners

The fitting of directional microphone hearing aids is becoming increasingly more routine, and this fitting option has proven to be a successful method to improve speech intelligibility in many noisy listening environments. Data suggest, however, that some hearing-impaired listeners receive significantly more directional benefit than others. It is of interest, therefore, to determine if directional benefit is predictable from identifiable audiologic factors. In this report, we examined whether the slope of audiometric configuration, amount of high-frequency hearing loss, and/or the aided omnidirectional performance for a speech-in-noise intelligibility task could be used to predict the magnitude of directional hearing aid benefit. Overall results obtained from three separate investigations revealed no significant correlation between the slope of audiometric configuration or amount of high-frequency hearing loss and the benefit obtained from directional microphone hearing instruments. Although there was a significant, negative relationship between aided omnidirectional performance and the directional benefit obtained in one study, there was considerable variability among individual participants, and nearly all of the listeners with the best omnidirectional hearing aid performance still received significant additional benefit from directional amplification. These results suggest that audiologists should consider the use of directional amplification for patients regardless of audiogram slope, high-frequency hearing loss, or omnidirectional speech intelligibility score.