A Comparison of Speech Audiometric Performance of Hypacusics With Clinic-fitted Hearing Aids and With Master Hearing Aid

Clinical audiologists at Utah State University have been using a master hearing aid as a basic part of hearing aid evaluation procedures . To ascertain the usefulness of the master hearing aid in predicting patient success with a wearable hearing aid , 20 subjects were given speech audiometric tests under the following conditions: (l) without amplification; (2) with the headset system of the master hearing aid (a system which utilizes chassis mounted microphones and external receivers of the type used with body-worn hearing aids); (3) with the ear-level system of the master hearing aid (a system which utilizes a microphone and receiver mounted in an ear-level hearing aid case); and (4) with a wearable ear-level hearing aid which had been previously selected for each subject on the basis of master hearing aid data. Using the ANOV procedure, statistically significant differences α=.05) were found between the mean speech reception thresholds obtained under the three aided test conditions, but differences were not clinically significant. The mean speech reception thresholds a greed within 4.0 dB. No significant difference was found between the mean speech discrimination scores obtained in quiet under the three aided test conditions. However, the mean speech discrimination score obtained in noise under the head set system condition was significantly poorer (α=.05) than the mean speech discrimination scores obtained under the ear-level system condition and also the wear able hearing aid condition. Differences as specified were 9.1 percent and 10.2 percent respectively. Conclusions were that the ear-level system of the master hearing aid and the headset system of the master hearing aid can be used to predict the SRT and speech discrimination score in quiet of hearing aid candidate using a wearable hearing aid, but that the ear-level system of the master hearing aid should be used exclusively when attempting to predict a patient\u27s success with a wearable hearing aid on speech discrimination tasks in noise