[Assessment inventories for hearing aid outcome].

BACKGROUND

At the beginning of 2012 new fee schedule positions have been introduced to the ambulatory physician fee schedule ("Einheitlicher Bewertungsmaßstab", EBM) regarding the hearing aid fittings of youngsters and adults. With regards to quality assurance the use of a hearing aid outcome self-assessment inventory is made compulsive. This article aims to review available hearing aid (self-) assessment inventories as well as the evaluations regarding criteria for test quality implemented.

METHOD

For this systematic review a selective literature research in PubMed has been carried out.

RESULTS

There are various self assessment inventories measuring hearing aid benefit. Many of the studies evaluating these inventories were implemented during the 1980ies and early 90ies when analogue hearing aids were commonly used. These results cannot automatically be transferred to the nowadays common digital devices. Only a small amount of studies investigated German translations of the mostly originally English inventories.

DISCUSSION

In order to be able to identify the actual meaning of resulting values from these inventories, it is important for ENT doctors and audiologists to be well informed of the tests' quality criteria.