gms | German Medical Science

76th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery

German Society of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery

04.05. - 08.05.2005, Erfurt

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Influence of impaired hearing on the nasalance

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  • corresponding author Rainer Mueller - HNO-Klinik des Universitätsklinikums der TU Dresden, Dresden
  • Albrecht Niemz - HNO-Klinik des Universitätsklinikums der TU Dresden, Dresden

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Hals-Nasen-Ohren-Heilkunde, Kopf- und Hals-Chirurgie. 76. Jahresversammlung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Hals-Nasen-Ohren-Heilkunde, Kopf- und Hals-Chirurgie e.V.. Erfurt, 04.-08.05.2005. Düsseldorf, Köln: German Medical Science; 2005. Doc05hno330

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.egms.de/en/meetings/hno2005/05hno181.shtml

Published: September 22, 2005

© 2005 Mueller et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Introduction: Information about influencing factors on the nasalance in the literature is very inconsistent. There are no exact objective nasalance measurements of patients with inner ear hearing losses or deafness in German-speaking countries.

Method: The nasalance of 126 persons with normal hearing, 28 carriers of a hearing aid and 26 individuals with a cochlear implant was examined with different test materials using the nasometer of Kay Elemetrics.

Results: Test persons with a hearing aid or a cochlear implant have a significantly higher nasalance. The nasalance increases as the hearing loss gets worse. The nasalance of prelingually deaf persons is higher than that of postlingually deaf persons. Vowels and sentences without nasal sounds are pronounced through the nose more significantly. Type and quality of the hearing aid and of the cochlear implant, the time the cochlear implant has been used by the patient and the strategy of speech processing all have an effect on the nasalance.

Discussion: The examination of a single influence parameter on the nasalance is difficult as the effects of other parameters are thus neglected. However, the study shows, that audition is an important influencing factor. Individuals with a hearing loss use a higher nasalance when speaking for a better perception of their own voices.