American Journal of Audiology最新文献

Purpose: The Minimum Speech Test Battery (MSTB) for adults was introduced in 1996 (Nilsson et al., 1996) and subsequently updated in 2011 (Advanced-Bionics et al., 2011). The MSTB has been widely used by clinicians as a guide for cochlear implant (CI) candidacy evaluations and to document post-operative speech recognition performance. Due to changes in candidacy over the past 10 years, a revision to the MSTB was needed.

Method: In 2022, the Institute for Cochlear Implant Training (ICIT) recruited a panel of expert CI audiologists to update and revise the MSTB. This panel utilized a modified Delphi consensus process to revise the test battery and to improve its applicability considering recent changes in CI care.

Results: This resulted in the MTSB-Version 3 (MSTB-3), which includes test protocols for identifying not only traditional CI candidates but also possible candidates for electric-acoustic stimulation and patients with single-sided deafness and asymmetric hearing loss. The MSTB-3 provides information that supplements the earlier versions of the MSTB, such as recommendations of when to refer patients for a CI, recommended patient-reported outcome measures, considerations regarding the use of cognitive screeners, and sample report templates for clinical documentation of pre- and post-operative care. Electronic versions of test stimuli, along with all the materials described above, will be available to clinicians via the ICIT website (https://www.cochlearimplanttraining.com).

Conclusion: The goal of the MSTB-3 is to be an evidence-based test battery that will facilitate a streamlined standard of care for adult CI candidates and recipients that will be widely used by CI clinicians.

Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate conversation hearing with an adaptive beamforming hearing aid that supports adaptive tracking of multiple talkers in an ecologically valid, real-world food court environment in a busy mall.

Method: Twenty older adult experienced hearing aid wearers with sensorineural hearing loss were fitted in the lab with binaural receiver-in-the-canal style hearing aids set with two programs, each having a different beamforming strategy. The participant and two researchers then met in a moderately noisy and reverberant food court at a local mall where the participant was asked to listen to a conversation between the two researchers. Participants rated the extent of their agreement with 10 positively worded statements specific to the conversation twice, once for each program. Participants then provided program-preference ratings for seven different aspects of a conversation during which the programs were switched back and forth by the researcher, so that participants were unaware of the condition to which they were listening.

Results: Real-world subjective ratings for all domains resulted in positive values on average for both programs. Pairwise comparisons indicated that the intervention algorithm had higher absolute ratings on five of the 10 criteria including understanding, clarity, focus, listening effort, and background noise. Ratings for preference between programs indicated a significant preference for the intervention algorithm for all seven criteria.

Conclusions: In a real-world setting, the use of hearing aids with separate processing of sounds from the front and back hemisphere provided positive subjective ratings. However, following a group conversation with multiple conversation partners, improvements in the algorithm to account for the locations of interlocutors and the natural head turning of the hearing aid wearer that occurs during a conversation by adding and controlling multiple adaptive beams in the front hemisphere significantly influenced preference for all aspects rated.

Purpose: Clinical audiologists typically assume that headphones and insert phones will produce comparable results when they are used to conduct speech-in-noise or other audiological tests; however, this may not always be the case. Here, we show that there are significant differences in the scores that previous studies have reported for headphone and insert-phone transducers on the Words-in-Noise (WIN) Test, and discuss the possibility that the variations in high-frequency output that are allowable under the speech source specifications of American National Standards Institute S3.6 might be contributing to transducer-dependent differences in performance for the WIN and other tests that are presented through the auxiliary input channels of clinical audiometers.

Method: A literature review was conducted to identify articles that reported WIN Test results for both listeners with normal hearing and with hearing impairment and specified the type of transducer (insert or TDH-50) used for the data collection.

Results: Among the 19 included studies, participants with normal hearing using inserts exhibited systematically worse WIN Test scores compared to those using TDH-50 headphones, while participants with hearing loss showed comparable average scores across transducer types.

Conclusions: The results highlight the importance of considering transducer type when interpreting WIN Test outcomes, particularly when comparing to normative scores obtained from individuals with normal hearing. Although further research is needed to elucidate the underlying mechanisms driving differences in test performance across transducer types, these findings underscore the need for standardized test administration protocols and careful documentation of transducer type when administering speech-in-noise tests for clinical or research applications.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to describe the factors related to dizziness in workers with noise-induced hearing loss in Brazil.

Method: A cross-sectional study was carried out with a sample from noise-induced hearing loss reports (2007-2019). The dependent variable in this study was dizziness, and the independent variables were sociodemographic characteristics, comorbidities, symptoms, and noise characteristics in the work environment. Logistic regression analysis was performed.

Results: A total of 3,824 individuals with noise-induced hearing loss in Brazil were analyzed. The prevalence of dizziness was 23.4% in the sample. Factors associated with dizziness were women (odds ratio [OR]: 2.10; 95% confidence interval [CI] [1.64, 2.69]), hypertension (OR: 1.68; 95% CI [1.38, 2.06]), headache (OR: 6.31; 95% CI [5.26, 7.57]), tinnitus (OR: 3.46; 95% CI [2.82, 4.25]), and continuous noise at the work environment (OR: 1.54; 95% CI [1.22, 1.94]).

Conclusions: The factors associated with the outcome-dizziness-were gender (female), systemic arterial hypertension, headache, tinnitus, and continuous exposure to workplace noise. Such findings demonstrate the importance of promoting a multifactorial approach to understanding dizziness among workers exposed to occupational noise.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to map the strategies used in hearing health education with military personnel during the Hearing Preservation Program (HPP).

Method: This study is a scoping review, with electronic searches conducted in online databases and gray literature: Latin American and Caribbean Literature in Health Sciences, PubMed/Medline, Scopus, Web of Science, ASHAWire, Google Scholar, and ProQuest Dissertation & Theses. Only studies describing, analyzing, or evaluating the application of the HPP to active duty or training military personnel were included.

Results: A total of 3,478 references were retrieved, and 12 studies met the inclusion criteria. The strategies were classified into five categories: focus group aimed at exploring knowledge and perceptions regarding hearing health (five studies), training on the proper fitting of hearing protection devices (four studies), the utilization of audiovisual materials (seven studies), questionnaires administrated before and after educational intervention (five studies), and feedback survey concerning the implemented hearing health education (three studies).

Conclusion: There are five strategies that aimed at assessing knowledge and attitudes, improving hearing health education, facilitating information access, and evaluating the applied actions.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25219589.

Purpose: An increase in the 1000/500 Hz frequency amplitude ratio (FAR) of the cervical and ocular vestibular evoked myogenic potentials (cVEMP and oVEMP, respectively) may serve as a potential biomarker for diagnosing Meniere's disease (MD). However, the aging process can also result in an increased FAR for VEMPs. In older patients, distinguishing whether changes in VEMP FAR are due to MD or aging processes becomes difficult. We aimed to investigate the effects of age on VEMP FARs and establish a FAR-normative range for different age groups.

Method: cVEMP and oVEMP were recorded from a total of 106 participants grouped as young, middle-aged, and older adults using air-conducted tone bursts at 500, 750, and 1000 Hz at 125 dB pSPL. The FAR was calculated for the cVEMP and oVEMP for the following frequencies: FAR1 = 1000/500, FAR2 = 1000/750, and FAR3 = 750/500.

Results: A significant age-related effect was observed on the cVEMP FAR. Although the oVEMP FAR showed an increasing trend with age, it was not statistically significant. Age-based normative FAR values are provided.

Conclusions: Drawing from the normative FAR from this study, there is evidence that the existing MD diagnostic criteria would misidentify a considerable number of older adults. Therefore, to reduce false positives, we recommend a more stringent cVEMP and oVEMP FAR criterion in older adults.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the hearing health care experience of satisfied and dissatisfied consumers as reported on Google reviews.

Method: Using qualitative thematic analysis, open-text responses from Google regarding hearing health care clinics across 40 U.S. cities were examined. During the original search, 13,168 reviews were identified. Purposive sampling led to a total of 8,420 five-star reviews and 321 one-star reviews. The sample consisted of 500 five-star (satisfied) and 234 one-star (dissatisfied) reviews, describing experiences with audiology clinics, excluding reviews related to ear, nose, and throat services; other medical specialties; and those not relevant to hearing health care.

Results: Satisfied and dissatisfied consumer reviews yielded nuanced dimensions of the hearing health care consumer experience, which were grouped into distinct domains, themes, and subthemes. Six and seven domains were identified from the satisfied and dissatisfied reviews, encompassing 23 and 26 themes, respectively. The overall experience domain revealed emotions ranging from contentment and gratitude to dissatisfaction and waning loyalty. The clinical outcomes domain highlights the pivotal contribution of well-being and hearing outcomes to the consumer experience, while the standard of care domain underscores shared expectations for punctuality, person-centered care, and efficient communication. Facility quality, professional competence, and inclusive care were also highlighted across positive and negative reviews.

Conclusions: Findings indicate dimensions of satisfied and dissatisfied hearing health care consumer experiences, identifying areas for potential service refinement. These consumer experiences inform person-centric service delivery in hearing health care.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess preschool children's hearing-related quality of life and to introduce the scale, originally titled "Preschool Hearing Environments and Reflections on Quality of Life Questionnaire" (Preschool HEAR-QL), to the literature through Turkish adaption, validity, and reliability analyses.

Method: Our study included 210 children aged 2-6 years: 110 with hearing loss (56 cochlear implant users and 54 hearing aid users) and 100 with normal hearing. Demographic data were collected and then the Preschool HEAR-QL, which was translated into Turkish, was administered twice at 15-day intervals. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to determine whether the factor structure found in the original scale development study was confirmed in our sample (construct validity). Cronbach's alpha, intraclass correlation scores, and the test-retest method were used to assess the scale's reliability as the findings were analyzed using paired samples t tests.

Results: The children with hearing loss had lower scores than their normal-hearing peers, and the difference was significant in the subdomains of behavior and attention, hearing environments, and communication. The subscale of the Preschool Period Listening Environments and their Reflections on Quality of Life Scale consists of 23 items, and Cronbach's alpha value was found as 0.922 in the first application and 0.926 in the second application (high reliability). In the model established for validity analysis, χ²/df = 2.156, root-mean-square error of approximation = 0.074, standard root-mean-square residual = 0.078, goodness-of-fit index = 0.830, adjusted goodness-of-fit index = 0.789, comparative fit index = 0.895, and Tucker-Lewis index = 0.881 (good model fit). In terms of test-retest reliability, the correlation between the two measurements was 0.837, and there was no statistical difference between the test-retest scores (p = .15).

Conclusion: The Turkish version of the Preschool HEAR-QL scale was proven to be a valid and reliable scale for assessing the hearing-related quality of life of children aged 2-6 years.

Supplemental material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25236949.

Purpose: The diagnosis of auditory processing disorder (APD) is controversial particularly due to the influence of higher order factors of language and cognition on the diagnostic APD testing. As a result, there might be a need for testing for other domains (e.g., cognition) along with conducting the diagnostic APD testing to rule out the influence of other domains. In order to make recommendations on whether cognitive testing is needed along with the auditory processing testing, as a starting point, the current study was conducted to examine the relationship between cognitive abilities and basic auditory processing in young adults.

Method: A total of 38 young adults with normal audiometric thresholds between 250 and 8000 Hz participated in this study. They were tested on their executive function, language, processing speed, working memory, and episodic memory components of cognitive testing and tests for temporal fine structure and spectrotemporal sensitivity for auditory processing testing.

Results: No significant correlation was found between the cognitive tests and the tests for basic auditory processing in young adults.

Conclusions: These findings present contrast to the existing findings in children and older adults where a stronger correlation between cognitive abilities and auditory processing has been found. The current findings suggest that testing for cognitive abilities may not be needed when testing for basic auditory processing in young adults.

Purpose: The main purpose of the study is to investigate whether the presence of residual hearing before cochlear implantation has an effect on temporal pattern recognition skills and musical perception in adults.

Method: The study included adults with cochlear implants who were between the ages of 20 and 45 years. Adults with cochlear implants were divided into two groups: absent (n = 20) and available (n = 20) groups according to residual hearing before implantation. Frequency Pattern and Duration Pattern tests were applied to evaluate temporal pattern recognition, and the "Music-Related Quality of Life Questionnaire" was applied to evaluate musical perceptions.

Results: There were no statistically significant differences between the groups in terms of cochlear-implanted hearing thresholds and speech recognition scores, musical perception, and musical activities, according to their residual hearing. On the other hand, the frequency and duration pattern recognition skills were statistically significantly better in adults with residual hearing. Also, statistically significant correlations were obtained in terms of temporal skills and musical perception subskills.

Conclusions: The presence of residual hearing before cochlear implantation may affect temporal auditory processing skills. It is concluded that the integration of cochlear implants may affect temporal processing skills in adults as well as quality of life. It is recommended that experts be aware of this issue and pay attention to residual hearing.