Experiences of hearing aid use among patients with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease dementia: A qualitative study

Objectives: Hearing aid usage supports communication and independence; however, many do not use their hearing aids. This study explored the experiences of hearing aid use in adults with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease. Methods: Participants completed semi-structured interviews which were analysed using thematic analysis. Ten people (six males, age range 75-86 years old) with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease who had been fitted with hearing aids were recruited to the study. Results: We identified four major themes: (1) memory and other cognitive barriers to using hearing aids, (2) practical aspects of hearing aids, (3) benefits of hearing aids, and (4) ambivalence towards hearing aids. Conclusions: Participants perceived a significant impact of cognitive impairment on the experience of using hearing aids. This population may benefit from targeted strategies to support use of hearing aids. The findings from this study can inform future research to optimise use of hearing aids in this population

Hearing Aids and Audiological Services for Children Questions & Answers,

Question and Answer information for Children with hearing problems, with hearing aids and audiological services

The disuse of hearing aids in elderly people diagnosed with a presbycusis at an old age home, in Johannesburg, South Africa: a pilot study

Background: Hearing loss is the most common form of human sensory deficit with its prevalence highest within the geriatric population. Approximately a third of adults aged from 61 years exhibit the characteristics of presbycusis, a number one contributor to communication disorders among the elderly, thereby affecting the social, functional andpsychological wellbeing of the elderly. Subsiquently, this leads to loneliness, isolation, dependence and frustration.Objective: To explore reasons why elderly people diagnosed with presbycusis and fitted with hearing aids stop using hearing aids post fitting.Method: A qualitative research design was adopted. Through purposive sampling, ten participants consisting of three males and seven females, aged between 74 and 85 participated in face-to-face and semi-structured interviews. Results: The following themes emerged: discomfort, lack of information about hearing aids, difficulty with function and maintenance and the lack of patient involvement in the hearing aid selection process.Conclusion: There are different reasons for disuse of hearing aids in elderly patients. Audiologists should ensure that hearing aids selection is patient specific and inclusive. Expectations of the elderly regarding hearing aids benefits and limitations should also be addressed by audiologists before fitting hearing aids.Keywords: Elderly, hearing aids, hearing loss, audiologists

Level discrimination of speech sounds by hearing-impaired individuals with and without hearing amplification

Objectives: The current study was designed to see how hearing-impaired individuals judge level differences between speech sounds with and without hearing amplification. It was hypothesized that hearing aid compression should adversely affect the user's ability to judge level differences. Design: Thirty-eight hearing-impaired participants performed an adaptive tracking procedure to determine their level-discrimination thresholds for different word and sentence tokens, as well as speech-spectrum noise, with and without their hearing aids. Eight normal-hearing participants performed the same task for comparison. Results: Level discrimination for different word and sentence tokens was more difficult than the discrimination of stationary noises. Word level discrimination was significantly more difficult than sentence level discrimination. There were no significant differences, however, between mean performance with and without hearing aids and no correlations between performance and various hearing aid measurements. Conclusions: There is a clear difficulty in judging the level differences between words or sentences relative to differences between broadband noises, but this difficulty was found for both hearing-impaired and normal-hearing individuals and had no relation to hearing aid compression measures. The lack of a clear adverse effect of hearing aid compression on level discrimination is suggested to be due to the low effective compression ratios of currently fit hearing aids

A Link Loss Model for the On-body Propagation Channel for Binaural Hearing Aids

Binaural hearing aids communicate with each other through a wireless link for synchronization. A propagation model is needed to estimate the ear-to-ear link loss for such binaural hearing aids. The link loss is a critical parameter in a link budget to decide the sensitivity of the transceiver. In this paper, we have presented a model for the deterministic component of the ear-to-ear link loss. The model takes into account the dominant paths having most of the power of the creeping wave from the transceiver in one ear to the transceiver in other ear and the effect of the protruding part of the outer ear called pinna. Simulations are done to validate the model using in-the-ear (ITE) placement of antennas at 2.45 GHz on two heterogeneous phantoms of different age-group and body size. The model agrees with the simulations. The ear-to-ear link loss between the antennas for the binaural hearing aids in the homogeneous SAM phantom is compared with a heterogeneous phantom. It is found that the absence of the pinna and the lossless shell in the SAM phantom underestimate the link loss. This is verified by the measurements on a phantom where we have included the pinnas fabricated by 3D-printing

The relationship between practical hearing aid skills and patient satisfaction in the public health care setting

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master in Audiology In the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology Faculty of Humanities University of the WitwatersrandThe ability to handle a hearing aid may impact on satisfaction with and acceptance of hearing aids by individuals with hearing loss. Previous research has noted the correlation between hearing aid handling skills and effective hearing aid use. Although many studies have focused on the individuals’ satisfaction with their hearing aids there is a lack of information regarding the relationship between satisfaction with hearing aids and hearing aid handling skills. This is especially true for the South African context, where no studies have been conducted to explore this relationship. The main aim of the study was thus to determine the relationship between the ability to manipulate hearing aids and self-perceived satisfaction with hearing aids in individuals fitted with hearing aids in a public health care hospital. A non-experimental, cross-sectional, correlational research design was employed for the purpose of this study. The sample included 85 adults fitted with hearing aids in a public health care hospital. There was an equal distribution of gender and the mean age of participants was 66.27 years. Participants completed the Practical Hearing Aid Skills Test – Revised (PHAST-R) version and the Satisfaction with Amplification in Daily Life (SADL) questionnaire. The findings of the study indicate that the majority of participants were able to successfully manipulate their hearing aids (Mean score: 75.43%; Range: 10.71 - 100; SD: 21.58). The mean global score for satisfaction with amplification was 5.2 (Range: 3.1 - 6.8; SD: 0.84) indicating high levels of satisfaction with their hearing aids. Overall there was a significant correlation between hearing aid handling skills and satisfaction with amplification (rs= 0.22871; n = 85). Indicating participants who were better able to handle their hearing aids were more satisfied with them. The findings suggest that the majority of participants were satisfied with the hearing aids provided in a public health care hospital and that they were able to successfully handle their hearing aids. The use of the PHAST-R as part of the hearing aid orientation session is encouraged especially in light of the poor return rate for follow-up hearing aid orientation sessions at this public health care settings. The development of standard operating procedures for hearing aid fitting and orientation in the public health care sector is recommended to ensure that the best possible outcomes are ensured for all patients.GR201

Hearing Aids

This chapter presents an overview of the current state of a hearing aid tracing back through the history. The hearing aid, which was just a sound collector in the sixteenth century, has continued to develop until the current digital hearing aid for realizing the downsizing and digital signal processing, and this is the age of implanted hearing devices. However, currently popular implanted hearing devices are a fairly large burden for people soon after they become aware of their hearing loss, although auditory stimulation to the nerve in the early stage can avoid accelerated cognitive decline and an increased risk of incident all-cause dementia. For this reason, we tend to stick to wearable hearing aids that are easy to be put on and take off. Although the digital hearing aid has already reached the technical ceiling, the noninvasive hearing aids have some severe problems that are yet to be resolved. In the second half of this chapter, we discuss the scientific and technical solutions to broaden the range of permissible users of hearing aids

Control of feedback for assistive listening devices

Acoustic feedback refers to the undesired acoustic coupling between the loudspeaker and microphone in hearing aids. This feedback channel poses limitations to the normal operation of hearing aids under varying acoustic scenarios. This work makes contributions to improve the performance of adaptive feedback cancellation techniques and speech quality in hearing aids. For this purpose a two microphone approach is proposed and analysed; and probe signal injection methods are also investigated and improved upon

Improvement of Speech Perception for Hearing-Impaired Listeners

Hearing impairment is becoming a prevalent health problem affecting 5% of world adult populations. Hearing aids and cochlear implant already play an essential role in helping patients over decades, but there are still several open problems that prevent them from providing the maximum benefits. Financial and discomfort reasons lead to only one of four patients choose to use hearing aids; Cochlear implant users always have trouble in understanding speech in a noisy environment. In this dissertation, we addressed the hearing aids limitations by proposing a new hearing aid signal processing system named Open-source Self-fitting Hearing Aids System (OS SF hearing aids). The proposed hearing aids system adopted the state-of-art digital signal processing technologies, combined with accurate hearing assessment and machine learning based self-fitting algorithm to further improve the speech perception and comfort for hearing aids users. Informal testing with hearing-impaired listeners showed that the testing results from the proposed system had less than 10 dB (by average) difference when compared with those results obtained from clinical audiometer. In addition, Sixteen-channel filter banks with adaptive differential microphone array provides up to six-dB SNR improvement in the noisy environment. Machine-learning based self-fitting algorithm provides more suitable hearing aids settings. To maximize cochlear implant users’ speech understanding in noise, the sequential (S) and parallel (P) coding strategies were proposed by integrating high-rate desynchronized pulse trains (DPT) in the continuous interleaved sampling (CIS) strategy. Ten participants with severe hearing loss participated in the two rounds cochlear implants testing. The testing results showed CIS-DPT-S strategy significantly improved (11%) the speech perception in background noise, while the CIS-DPT-P strategy had a significant improvement in both quiet (7%) and noisy (9%) environment