[User benefit of modern hearing aids. A comparative study].

BACKGROUND

In the face of the rapid development of hearing aid system technology it is helpful to regularly study the user benefit of the current generation.

TEST PERSONS AND METHODS

To contribute to the question on how the user benefit of current hearing aids compares with the benefit of the previous generation of hearing aids, a multicentre study was carried out in cooperation with 79 hearing aid acoustics companies in Germany. The user benefit of modern hearing aids in everyday life was assessed by asking end users to participate in a survey by completing a questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of 20 items, 10 of which were taken from validated international inventories (SSQ: Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing scale, IOI-HA: International Outcome Inventory for Hearing Aids) and the other 10 were formulated particularly for this purpose.

RESULTS

A total of 664 usable questionnaires were returned whereby 421 responders were first time users and 243 responders were previous hearing aid users. The results of the present study showed that modern hearing aid system technology provides significant extra benefits at the 5 % level relative to the previous generation of hearing aids for all variables tested in this study.

CONCLUSIONS

Even though the amount of gain in terms of user benefit may be overestimated due to well-known placebo effects, an obvious net effect was evident. Correlations between the level of hearing aid benefit and possible influencing factors, such as age, gender, subjects own hearing aid, duration of use or hearing loss, could not be identified.