Evaluation of Performance with Occluded and Open-fit Receiver-In. Canal (RIC) Hearing Aids

Abstract

The present study was designed to evaluate the performance of open fit and occluded fit RIC hearing aids in individuals having flat and sloping sensorineural hearing loss on various subjective and objective measures in open fit and occluded fit conditions. The subjective measures included sound field thresholds, Uncomfortable loudness level for speech noise, Speech identification scores in quiet, Speech recognition threshold in noise (SNR-50), and Quality judgment of recorded speech and own voice. The objective measure considered was Real Ear Aided Gain (REAG). Results showed that the aided sound field thresholds obtained in occluded fit condition was better than that in open fit condition at majority of the test frequencies There was no significant difference between the open fit and the occluded fit RIC hearing aids in speech identification scores in quiet. However, participants performed better in noise on the speech recognition threshold in noise (SNR-50) task. For the quality ratings, there was a significant difference between two aided conditions – open fit and occluded fit-for 'naturalness', 'fallness ', and 'overall impression ' for flat hearing loss group. For individuals with sloping hearing loss, open fit condition was shown to be better than occluded fit condition. The improvement of Own voice quality and reduction of occlusion effect was the most common factor reported by the individuals in open fit condition than occluded fit condition, especially the sloping hearing loss group. On real ear measurements, there was a significant difference between REAG only for certain frequencies in open-fit and occluded condition in the group with flat configuration.