gms | German Medical Science

Background noise and reverberant listening conditions make listening difficult in real life situations. The aim of this study is to evaluate hearing performance in real life for MED-EL and VIBRANT-MED-EL hearing implant users respectively in one and the same study.

So far, 33 CI (unilateral, bilateral, EAS, SSD) and VSB (sensorineural HL, mixed HL) users participated in the study. Different inclusion criteria had been defined before for each group of implant devices, i.e. speech performance ≥40% HSM (at 65dB SPL); hearing experience with the device ≥6 months; device use per day ≥10hours.

To perform the tests all patients used their individual everyday hearing condition.

Outcomes were taken at a single test visit in a sound-treated room using a standardized audiometer, an audiometric loudspeaker (1m in front of the subject, S0N0).

To evaluate the ability to recognize speech (Oldenburg Sentence Test) in background noise (speech shaped noise) the objective Roving Level Test (RLT) has been chosen. Additionally the Just Understanding speech test (JUST) to determine subjects’ acceptable noise levels to just be able to follow conversation and the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) to measure a subject’s self-assessed listening effort in a particular listening situation, have been included in the study.

Nice correlation seems to exist between the results of the RLT and the JUST. These and other preliminary results of the study will be shown.

It remains to be seen if the JUST could be used appropriately for prospective clinical purposes because of its advantage to be done for all hearing devices due to flexible and individually selectable SNR (rated by the patient).

Der Erstautor weist auf folgenden Interessenkonflikt hin: Die Studie wurde von der Firma MedEl unterstützt.