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Speech-in-noise screening tests by internet, part 1: test evaluation for noise-induced hearing loss identification
Monique C J Leensen1, Jan A P M de Laat, Wouter A Dreschler
1Clinical and Experimental Audiology, ENT Department, Academic Medical Centre (AMC), Amsterdam, The Netherlands. m.c.leensen@amc.nl
Objective:
In the Netherlands three internet-based self-screening tests have been developed; the National Hearing Test (NHT), Earcheck (EC), and Occupational Earcheck (OEC). These tests are adaptive speech-in-noise tests using either digit triplets or monosyllables, presented in stationary speech-shaped noise. These tests can be highly valuable in increasing the awareness and prevention of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). This study evaluates these online speech-in-noise tests and investigates their potential to detect NIHL.
Design:
In a multi-centre study the results of the three online screening tests are compared to pure-tone audiometry and to the Dutch sentence SRT test ( Plomp & Mimpen, 1979a ), which is considered the clinical standard.
Study Sample:
In total, 49 normal-hearing listeners and 49 patients with different degrees of NIHL participated.
Results:
The online tests show good reliability, but there is much overlap in outcomes between normal-hearing listeners and participants with early NIHL. In addition, rather low correlations of the test results with both the Dutch sentence SRT test and pure-tone thresholds are found. These findings result in rather low test sensitivity: 54% (NHT) and 51% (EC), or low specificity: 49% (OEC).
Conclusions:
The online screening tests in their current form are unsuitable to be used for early NIHL screening purposes.
