[Practical hearing compensation and an assessment of hearing effect in patients with profound hearing loss using...

This investigation was carried out to study practical hearing compensation with hearing aids and the correlation between subjective evaluation (questionnaire survey) and objective evaluation (speech perception test) as an assessment of hearing aid effect in patients with profound hearing loss. 1. Forty-nine patients with hearing levels of 90dB or more (23 men and 26 women) were examined. Their mean and median hearing levels were 105.9dB (standard deviation: 10.4dB) and 106.3dB, respectively. The patients ranged in age from 18 to 74, with a mean age of 47.4. 2. Subjective evaluation was carried out by a questionnaire survey in which the patients chose one of 4 or 5 graded categories in 10 different hearing conditions, and three items of "satisfactory", "uneasiness" and "effectiveness". Speech sound discrimination ability for vowels and monosyllables, and speech intelligibility of words and sentences, were evaluated in audition only (A), vision only (V) and a combination of both (A + V), totaling 12 conditions with hearing aids as the objective evaluation using video tapes materials. 3. The subjective evaluation revealed that 60% of patients with hearing loss of 90-110dB understood "one to one conversation in a quiet place". Speech perception was poorer in "conversation in a noisy place" than in "conversation in a quiet place". Speech perception became poorer in the order of "one to one", "to a few people", and "to many people". For subjective feeling, 56.4% answered "satisfactory", and for hearing aid effectiveness, 78.7% answered "effective". 4. In the objective evaluation, the rates of correct answers were 19.6% in A and 46.3% in A + V for monosyllables, 19.8% in A and 43.4% in A + V for words, and 29.5% in A and 60.0% in A+V for sentences. 5. There were significant correlations (p < 0.001) between subjective evaluation of "in a quiet place and one to one conversation" (among other conditions) and objective evaluations of monosyllables, and word and sentence recognition, mostly in A and A + V. These results suggest that hearing compensation by hearing aids can be evaluated objectively in patients with profound hearing loss when word and sentence recognition tests are performed in addition to the monosyllable recognition test, and it is more practical if vision is examined in addition to hearing for speech perception in patients with profound hearing loss.