Anwar Muhammad Naveed
The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.
Springerplus. 2013 Nov 8;2:595. doi: 10.1186/2193-1801-2-595. eCollection 2013.
The objective of this research is to find the factors associated with tinnitus masker from the literature, and by using the large amount of audiology data available from a large NHS (National Health Services, UK) hearing aid clinic. The factors evaluated were hearing impairment, age, gender, hearing aid type, mould and clinical comments.
The research includes literature survey for factors associated with tinnitus masker, and performs the analysis of audiology data using statistical and data mining techniques.
This research uses a large audiology data but it also faced the problem of limited data for tinnitus.
It uses 1,316 records for tinnitus and other diagnoses, and 10,437 records of clinical comments from a hearing aid clinic.
The research is looking for variables associated with tinnitus masker, and in future, these variables can be combined into a single model to develop a decision support system to predict about tinnitus masker for a patient.
The results demonstrated that tinnitus maskers are more likely to be fit to individuals with milder forms of hearing loss, and the factors age, gender, type of hearing aid and mould were all found significantly associated with tinnitus masker. In particular, those patients having Age < =55 years were more likely to wear a tinnitus masker, as well as those with milder forms of hearing loss. ITE (in the ear) hearing aids were also found associated with tinnitus masker. A feedback on the results of association of mould with tinnitus masker from a professional audiologist of a large NHS (National Health Services, UK) was also taken to better understand them. The results were obtained with different accuracy for different techniques. For example, the chi-squared test results were obtained with 95% accuracy, for Support and Confidence only those results were retained which had more than 1% Support and 80% Confidence.
The variables audiograms, age, gender, hearing aid type and mould were found associated with the choice of tinnitus masker in the literature and by using statistical and data mining techniques. The further work in this research would lead to the development of a decision support system for tinnitus masker with an explanation that how that decision was obtained.
本研究的目的是从文献中找出与耳鸣掩蔽器相关的因素，并利用英国国家医疗服务体系（NHS）一家大型助听器诊所提供的大量听力学数据进行研究。评估的因素包括听力损失、年龄、性别、助听器类型、耳模和临床意见。
该研究包括对与耳鸣掩蔽器相关因素的文献调查，并使用统计和数据挖掘技术对听力学数据进行分析。
本研究使用了大量的听力学数据，但也面临耳鸣数据有限的问题。
研究使用了1316条耳鸣及其他诊断记录，以及一家助听器诊所的10437条临床意见记录。
该研究正在寻找与耳鸣掩蔽器相关的变量，未来，这些变量可以组合成一个单一模型，以开发一个决策支持系统，为患者预测耳鸣掩蔽器。
结果表明，耳鸣掩蔽器更适合听力损失较轻的个体，年龄、性别、助听器类型和耳模等因素均与耳鸣掩蔽器显著相关。特别是，年龄≤55岁的患者以及听力损失较轻的患者更有可能佩戴耳鸣掩蔽器。耳道式（ITE）助听器也与耳鸣掩蔽器有关。还征求了英国国家医疗服务体系（NHS）一位专业听力学家对耳模与耳鸣掩蔽器相关性结果的反馈，以便更好地理解这些结果。不同技术获得的结果准确性不同。例如，卡方检验结果的准确率为95%，对于支持度和置信度，仅保留支持度超过1%且置信度超过80%的结果。
通过文献研究以及使用统计和数据挖掘技术，发现听力图、年龄、性别、助听器类型和耳模等变量与耳鸣掩蔽器的选择有关。本研究的进一步工作将导致开发一个耳鸣掩蔽器决策支持系统，并解释该决策是如何得出的。
