September 6, 2007

I didn't have clinic on Monday due to Labor Day; however, Wednesday proved to be a busy day even though no one was scheduled. We performed listening checks and the mic still was not working. One of our client's had brought in his hearing aids because they needed to be repaired. After listening to both aids, we noted the right aid was not working at all and the left aid was working intermittently. The gentleman had also brought in an older aid he had which was weak, so that one was sent away to be repaired as well.
Later in the day we had a woman come into the clinic who had purchased new hearing aids. She had originally purchased Deltas, but what not happy with them, so instead she had ordered bilateral ITC's. We administered the QuickSin with and without the new hearing aids and some improvement was noted. We did have to make some programming adjustments because the client felt the aids were too loud, especially the left aid. After some adjustment, she stated they sounded comfortable. After the second administration of the QuickSin, the APHAB was used to discuss different environments in which she has the most difficulty and what noises she considers to be too loud. The patient will return for a follow-up appointment in two weeks.

I found an interesting article on the effects of providing and withholding postfitting fine-tuning adjustments on outcome measures in novice hearing aid users. This was a pilot study conducted at the University of Louisville. Their study examined the subject-based hearing aid performance measured through tests of speech recognition in noise, sound quality, and benefit. The participants in the study were all first time hearing aid users with moderate high-frequency hearing losses. They studied these individuals over a 5 month postfitting period of time. The researchers made adjustments to the hearing aids during the postfitting based upon the participants' complaints and observations. The group performance was evaluated using the COSI, two versions of the APHAB, a Satisfaction scale, a Sound Quality tool, and the SIN test. The results from this study showed no statistically significant difference in the control and treatment groups performance and perceived benefit during the postfitting sessions. As discussed in the article, the researchers stated the data showed no measurable advantage from postfitting adjustments of 10 dB or less to hearing aids with a wide dynamic range.

Reference:

Cunningham, D.R., Williams, K.J., & Goldsmith, L.J. (2001). Effects of providing and withholding postfitting fine-tuning adjustments on outcome measures in novice hearing aid users: A pilot study. American Journal of Audiology, 10, 1-11.

If you would like to read this article, follow this link:
http://aja.asha.org/cgi/reprint/10/1/13?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=1&andorexacttitle=and&andorexacttitleabs=and&fulltext=Outcome+measures&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT