Abstract
Objectives To analyze the clinical application of SoundBite bone conduction hearing aids by assessing the improvement of speech recognition and the scores of the benefit scale questionnaire for patients with single-sided deafness (SSD). Design Nine patients aged 24 to 61 years with SSD for more than 3 months were enrolled in this study. The patients could understand and repeat Mandarin and have good compliance with the study. The measurements were evaluated before and after one month of wearing hearing aids using the pure tone audiometry threshold, speech recognition in quiet and in noise, and the Glasgow Benefit Inventory (GBI) benefit scale score. Results Pure tone audiometry results showed that the average hearing threshold of good ears and bad ears was 11.4 ± 2.6 dB HL and 89.9 ± 6.4 dB HL, respectively. The average hearing threshold of bad ears after wearing hearing aids was 23.5 ± 9.0 dB HL. Statistical analysis showed that the hearing improvement for the bad ears after wearing hearing aids was significant. The speech audiometry results showed that the disyllable word recognition score of the bad ears in quiet increased significantly at 50 dB SPL by 40 ± 12 percentage points and at 65 dB SPL by 71 ± 15 percentage points. As for the speech recognition in noise, when the signal sound came from the bad ear side and the noise from the good ear side (SSSDNAH), the speech recognition score (SRS) significantly increased by 17 ± 6 and 9 ± 4 at a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of -2 dB and -5 dB, respectively, after wearing the hearing aids. When the signal sound came from the front of the patient and the noise from the bad ear side (S0NSSD), the SRS scores were reduced by 5 ± 5 and 7 ± 5 percentage points at SNR equal to -2 dB and -5 dB, which was significantly different from that before wearing the hearing aids. When the signal and noise both came from the front of the patients (S0N0), the SRS was not significantly increased by 5 ± 4 percentage points at SNR equal to -2 dB compared to before wearing hearing aids. However, the SRS was significantly increased by 5 ± 2 percentage points at SNR equal to -5 dB compared to before wearing hearing aids. The average total GBI score was 31 ± 12 for the nine patients, with an average score of 32 ± 10, 31 ± 8, and 30 ± 7 for general conditions, social support, and physical health, respectively. The results of the questionnaires showed that patients' quality of life was improved after wearing SoundBite bone conduction hearing aids. Conclusions SoundBite bone conduction hearing aids are a good choice for patients with SSD, as it could improve the speech recognition ability of patients both in a quiet and noisy environment and improves the quality of life after wearing hearing aids.
Highlights
Single-sided deafness (SSD) refers to severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss on one side (>70 dB HL) and an average hearing threshold of 0.5 to 4 kHz ≤25 dB HL on the good ear [1]
The results showed that the speech recognition threshold (SRT) was an average of 2.5 dB lower than that without wearing SoundBite with the signal coming from the front and the noise from the good ear side
The study and the informed consent procedures were approved by the local ethics committee (Ethics Committee of the Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital, approval number: 2018-092), and written informed consent was obtained before participation
Summary
Single-sided deafness (SSD) refers to severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss on one side (>70 dB HL) and an average hearing threshold of 0.5 to 4 kHz ≤25 dB HL on the good ear [1]. The patients demonstrate that monaural cues can provide useful localization information in the horizontal as well as in the vertical dimension [2]. Neural Plasticity barriers for speech communication in a noisy environment, especially when the sound source is on the bad ear side [3]. Patients with SSD often need to turn their head when communicating with others in order to use their good ears, with some patients feeling embarrassed or inconvenienced [4]. The SSD patients are not able to distinguish the source of the sound
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