A Study of Change in Nasalance Scores - Pre Fitting And Post Fitting of Hearing Aids in Adults with Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Abstract

Background: Nasality is a common resonance error present in the speech of HI individuals that contributes to reduced speech intelligibility. The aim of the study is to find out the nasalance scores at pre and post aided conditions and compare the result to know the effect of usage of hearing aids on nasalance. Material and methods: 60 subjects within the age range of 30 to 60 years with post lingual bilateral sensory neural hearing loss were taken. Participants were asked to read Oral, Nasal and Phonetically Balanced passage. Nasalance score of the passages was recorded using Nasometer II (Kay PENTAX), in both pre-aided and post-aided condition.post-aided recording was done after three months of usage of hearing aid. Result: Descriptive statistical were done to obtain the mean and standard deviation of the nasal scores. The mean nasalance score of Oral passage, Nasal passage and Phonetically Balanced passage were (X± SD= 24.2± 6.9, 49.6± 10.8; and 35.4 ±7.4 respectively) in pre-aided condition and (X± SD= 18.7± 6.5, 39.1 ± 10.29 and 28.5 ±7.3 respectively) in post-aided condition. There is a Significant difference (p= 0.001) between the pre-aided and post-aided nasalance score. Conclusion: The obtained nasalance data yielded significantly lower nasalance scores in the post aided condition for the three reading passages. This suggests that velopharyngeal closure is more accurate when auditory feedback, and other sensory information, is increased. We can assume that the use of auditory feedback as a strategy to improve velopharyngeal function in patients with velopharyngeal disorders must be encouraged.