“Wie hört Hessen”: initial findings regarding the quality of hearing aid provision for patients with hearing impairments in everyday life

Introduction Speech perception (SP), especially in noisy environments, is extremely difficult for almost all patients with significant hearing loss. Despite good test results in the established speech hearing tests, the day-to-day hearing situation is not represented adequately. The objective of the study is to assess subjective satisfaction with hearing aid provision.Materials and methods:Patients with significant hearing impairments (n=20) who have been provided with hearing aids were examined and a subjective assessment of hearing performance was carried out using the SSQ questionnaire. Furthermore, SP was measured in a quiet environment using the Freiburg monosyllable word test and the Oldenburg sentence test (OT). Hearing performance with hearing aids against a backdrop of complex background noise was tested using the adaptive Oldenburg test with 2 conditions.Results:The SSQ resulted in average scores of 3.3 for SP, 4.2 for speech hearing and 5.0 for hearing quality. SP with a hearing aid in a quiet environment averaged at 56% in the Freiburg test. SP reached 93% in the OT in a quiet environment. Using the OT, SP with background noise averaged at 68.05% for condition 1 and 59.7% for condition 2.Discussion:The study demonstrated that subjective satisfaction levels with hearing aid provision are low. The results for the OT in a quiet environment were too good, which does not correspond with the subjective perceptions of the patients. The OT results were more in line with subjective perceptions in the case of complex background noise. Therefore, for patients with a result which was subjectively unsatisfactory and good speech results in a quiet environment, complex hearing situations should be simulated in order to better assess hearing performance in everyday life.

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Publication History

Article published online:
10 June 2020