"Self-Assessment of Hearing Disabilities in Cochlear Implant Users Using the SSQ and the Reduced SSQ5 Version. Otology & Neurotology 2013;34: 1622-9".

Abstract

To the Editor: We thank you for giving us the opportunity to add some comments and trends raised after the publication of our article “Self-Assessment of Hearing Disabilities in Cochlear Implant Users Using the SSQ and the Reduced SSQ5 Version.” The five-item Speech Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ5), introduced by Demeester et al. (1), was used as a starting point to investigate whether this questionnaire is robust to effectively measure evolutions in hearing (dis)abilities in Cochlear Implant (CI) users. Recently, Noble et al. (2) developed and evaluated a 12-item version of the Speech Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ). They concluded that the SSQ12 provides similar results to SSQ49 in a large clinical research sample. To examine which reduced SSQ version had the strongest degree of agreement with the original SSQ49 in a CI population, Spearman correlations coefficients were calculated in our CI study group. Figure 1 shows that the 12-item version provides more similar results to the SSQ49 (r2 = 0.90), compared with the 5-item version (r2 = 0.62) of Demeester et al. (1).FIG. 1: Spearman correlations between (A) the SSQ49 and the SSQ12 and (B) the SSQ49 and the SSQ5 for the CI population study group (n = 54). CI indicates cochlear implant; SSQ5, five-item Speech Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ5).In conclusion, the SSQ5 is a robust questionnaire to effectively measure the evolutions in hearing (dis)abilities in CI users. However, the degree of agreement between the SSQ49 and the SSQ12 turns out to be stronger, compared with the SSQ5. Therefore, routine clinical self-assessment hearing performance in the CI population in the Antwerp University Hospital (Belgium) will include the SSQ12 from now on.