Speech perception scores in cochlear implant recipients : an analysis of ceiling effects in the CUNY sentence test (Quiet) in post-lingually deafened cochlear implant recipients

OBJECTIVES : To evaluate the clinical utility of the City University of New York sentence test in a cohort of post-lingually deafened cochlear implants recipients over time. METHODS : 117 post-lingually deafened, Australian English-speaking CI recipients aged between 23 and 98 years (M = 66 years; SD = 15.09) were recruited. CUNY sentence test scores in quiet were collated and analysed at two cut-offs, 95% and 100%, as ceiling scores. RESULTS : CUNY sentence scores ranged from 4% to 100% (M = 86.75; SD = 20.65), with 38.8% of participants scoring 95% and 16.5% of participants reaching the 100% scores. The percentage of participants reaching the 95% and 100% ceiling scores increased over time (6 and 12 months post-implantation). The distribution of all post-operative CUNY test scores skewed to the right with 82% of test scores reaching above 90%. DISCUSSION : This study demonstrates that the CUNY test cannot be used as a valid tool to measure the speech perception skills of post-lingually deafened CI recipients over time. This may be overcome by using adaptive test protocols or linguistically, cognitively or contextually demanding test materials. CONCLUSION : The high percentage of CI recipients achieving ceiling scores for the CUNY sentence test in quiet at 3 months post-implantation, questions the validity of using CUNY in CI assessment test battery and limits its application for use in longitudinal studies evaluating CI outcomes. Further studies are required to examine different methods to overcome this problem.http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ycii202017-02-28hb2016Speech-Language Pathology and Audiolog

Validation of remote mapping of cochlear implants

Recipients of cochlear implants need to attend regular mapping sessions to adjust their speech processors.We developed a PC-based system for remote mapping, which employed voice, video and text communication. Eleven implant recipients had their implant electrodes programmed (mapped) both by conventional methods and remotely. Speech tests, conducted by a family member or research assistant, were used to test the outcome of the programming during the remote consultation. The recipient and audiologist were surveyed regarding aspects of the teleconsultation. There were no significant differences between conventionally and remotely programmed electrode settings. The speech test results were perfect in most cases. The average time to complete the conventional mapping session was 37 min and the average time for the remote mapping session was 42 min (P_0.034). Recipients and the audiologist reported favourably on most aspects of the consultations. Lack of synchronisation between voice and video was the most common problem, which disrupted communication. The assistant was important to overcome this problem. All but one participant indicated they would be willing to use tele-mapping in the future. Remote programming of cochlear implants can be conducted reliably with relatively simple equipment, potentially in the homes of remotely located patients assisted by a family member.Med-el and ESIA’s Gift of Hearinghttp://jtt.sagepub.comam201

Clinical validation of automated audiometry with continuous noise-monitoring in a clinically heterogeneous population outside a sound-treated environment

OBJECTIVE : Examine the accuracy of automated audiometry in a clinically heterogeneous population of adults using the KUDUwave automated audiometer. DESIGN : Prospective accuracy study. Manual audiometry was performed in a sound-treated room and automated audiometry was not conducted in a sound-treated environment. STUDY SAMPLE : 42 consecutively recruited participants from a tertiary otolaryngology department in Western Australia. RESULTS : Absolute mean differences ranged between 5.12 – 9.68 dB (air-conduction) and 8.26 – 15.00 dB (bone-conduction). 86.5% of manual and automated 4FAs were within 10 dB (i.e. ±5 dB); 94.8% were within 15 dB. However, there were significant (p<0.05) differences between automated and manual audiometry at 0.25, 0.5, 1 and 2 kHz (air-conduction) and 0.5 and 1 kHz (bone-conduction). The effect of age (≥55 years) on accuracy (p = 0.014) was not significant on linear regression (p>0.05; R2 = 0.11). The presence of a hearing loss (better ear ≥26 dB) did not significantly affect accuracy (p = 0.604; air-conduction), (p = 0.218; boneconduction). CONCLUSIONS : This study provides clinical validation of automated audiometry using the KUDUwave in a clinically heterogeneous population, without the use of a sound-treated environment. Whilst threshold variations were statistically significant, future research is needed to ascertain the clinical significance of such variation.http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/iija202017-05-31hb2016Speech-Language Pathology and Audiolog

Models of service delivery in adult cochlear implantation and evaluation of outcomes

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT : All relevant data are within the manuscript and the Supporting Information files, S2 and S3.SUPPORTING INFORMATION : FILE S1. Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-scr) checklist. FILE S2. Sample search strategy. FILE S3. List of citations in each EPOC delivery arrangement category.BACKGROUND : This study aimed to describe available evidence of cochlear implantation delivery arrangements in adults and the outcomes by which these service models are measured. METHODS : Scoping review of English language, primary studies conducted on adults (18 years) with ten or more subjects, published between January 2000 and June 2022, which assessed the effects of delivery arrangements of cochlear implantation were included. MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL Plus, AMED, PsycINFO, LILACS, KoreaMed, IndMed, Cochrane CRCT, ISRCTN registry, WHO ICTRP and Web of Science were systematically searched. Included studies had to have a method section explicitly measure at least one of the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organization of Care (EPOC) outcome category. Criteria for systematic reviews and delivery arrangement category based on EPOC taxonomy was included in data extraction. Data was narratively synthesized based on EPOC categories. RESULTS : A total of 8135 abstracts were screened after exclusion of duplicates, of these 357 studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Around 40% of the studies investigated how care is delivered, focusing on quality and safety systems. New care pathways to coordinate care and the use of information and communication technology were emerging areas. There was little evidence on continuity, coordination and integration of care, how the workforce is managed, where care is provided and changes in the healthcare environment. The main outcome measure for various delivery arrangements were the health status and performance in a test. CONCLUSION : A substantial body of evidence exists about safety and efficacy of cochlear implantation in adults, predominantly focused on surgical aspects and this area is rapidly growing. There is a lack of evidence on aspects of care delivery that may have more impact on patients’ experience such as continuity, coordination and integration of care and should be a focus of future research. This would lead to a better understanding of how patient’s view CI experience, associated costs and the value of different care models.The Raine Medical Research Foundation, The University of Western Australia.https://journals.plos.org/plosone/am2024Speech-Language Pathology and AudiologySDG-03:Good heatlh and well-bein

Analysis of a cochlear implant database : changes in tinnitus prevalence and distress after cochlear implantation

The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence and distress of tinnitus pre- and post-cochlear implantation in patients with bilateral severe to profound hearing loss. In this retrospective study, we included patients from a cochlear implant clinic in Perth, Western Australia. Pre- and post-cochlear implantation data from 300 implant recipients were collected on self-reported presence of tinnitus, tinnitus distress using the Tinnitus Reaction Questionnaire (TRQ), hearing-related quality of life using the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (APHAB), and consonant-nucleus vowel-consonant (CNC) word recognition test scores. Retrospectively, patients were grouped into those with or without tinnitus, and the grade of tinnitus distress. The potential factors associated with post-implantation changes in the presence of tinnitus and its distress were evaluated. Tinnitus prevalence was 55.8% pre-operatively and 44.3% post-implantation with a median TRQ score respectively of 12.0 (IQR: 1.0–28.0) and 3.5 (IQR: 0.0–16.2) points. Among the 96 patients experiencing tinnitus pre-implantation, 14.6% patients experienced moderate to catastrophic tinnitus distress pre-implantation compared to 6.3% post-implantation. To conclude, the pre- and post-implantation median TRQ score for the cohort population showed that tinnitus was a “slight” handicap. Tinnitus prevalence and its associated tinnitus distress decreased post-implantation. Patients with tinnitus post-implantation were significantly younger and had less severe pre-implantation hearing loss in the non-implanted ear than patients without tinnitus. Further research is needed to understand the factors influencing changes in tinnitus.https://journals.sagepub.com/home/tiahj2023Speech-Language Pathology and Audiolog

Prevalence of Hyperacusis and Its Relation to Health: The Busselton Healthy Ageing Study

ImportanceThe prevalence of hyperacusis and its relationship with mental and general health is unknown in a nonclinical sample. Therefore, we aimed to determine the prevalence of hyperacusis and its relation with hearing, general and mental health in a population-based study.Study DesignProspective population-based study.Material and MethodsThis study uses data from the Busselton Healthy Ageing Study (BHAS). A sample of 5,107 eligible inhabitants aged 45 to 70 years completed a detailed questionnaire and a clinical assessment. A positive answer to “Do you consider yourself sensitive or intolerant to everyday sounds” was used to indicate hyperacusis. Logistic regression was used to examine the association between hearing, mental and general health factors, and hyperacusis.ResultsOf 5,107 participants, 775 (15.2%) reported hyperacusis. The majority of participants with hyperacusis reported an occasional effect on daily life (72.0%). Being female, older in age, having a lower income, physical or mental health difficulties, more severe hearing loss, and tinnitus were all associated with the presence of hyperacusis. Individuals who experience hearing impairment, poorer general or mental health have a higher possibility of hyperacusis having an effect on their daily life.ConclusionsIn this community population-based cohort study, we found a prevalence of hyperacusis of 15.2%. Individuals with hearing loss, mental health problems, and lower physical health have a higher possibility of experiencing effects on their daily life associated with their hyperacusis. Unravelling the relationship between hyperacusis hearing, general and mental health can be of major importance for a better understanding of the condition and its consequences.Level of EvidenceII-2 Laryngoscope, 202

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Factors associated with self-reported hearing aid management skills and knowledge

Purpose: Hearing aid management describes the skills and knowledge required for the handling, use, care, and maintenance of the hearing aid. The importance of hearing aid management skills and knowledge is evidenced by their association with hearing aid outcomes. However, the nature of this association and the influence of participant factors on this association are unknown. Accordingly, the aims of the current study were to (a) investigate participant factors that influence hearing aid management skills and knowledge and (b) investigate the impact of hearing aid management skills and knowledge on hearing aid outcomes.Method: Factors associated with hearing aid management skills and knowledge were investigated through an e-mail- and paper-based self-report survey, including the Hearing Aid Skills and Knowledge Inventory (Bennett, Meyer, Eikelboom, & Atlas, 2018b) and the International Outcomes Inventory for Hearing Aids (Cox & Alexander, 2002). The study sample included 518 adult hearing aid owners, ranging in age from 18 to 97 years (M = 71 years, SD = 14 years), 61% male and 39% female, recruited from seven hearing clinics across Australia.Results: Participant factors found to be associated with hearing aid skills and knowledge included participants' age, gender, style of hearing aid, age of current hearing aid, and total years of hearing aid ownership. Higher levels of hearing aid management skills and knowledge were found to be associated with better hearing aid outcomes, specifically higher self-reported satisfaction with hearing aids, perceived benefit from hearing aids, and overall outcome of the hearing aid fitting as evaluated by the International Outcomes Inventory for Hearing Aids.Conclusions: Hearing aid management difficulties were greatest for older people, women, and owners of behindthe-ear style of hearing aids, suggesting that clinicians need to be cognizant of the additional needs for these three groups. The positive association between hearing aid outcomes and hearing aid skills and knowledge emphasizes the importance of education and training on hearing aid management for successful aural rehabilitation