Comparison of the Effect of Three Strategies in Individuals with Sloping Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Abstract

Background: Advances in hearing aid technology especially for the individuals with sloping sensorineural hearing loss have improved drastically. However, research pertaining to use of such technology and its outcomes has been limited. Aim: To compare the performance of older adults with sloping SNHL with three amplification strategies. Method: Aided warble tone thresholds, speech identification scores using recorded high frequency Kannada word lists and SNR-50 were measured. These measures were obtained in three aided conditions, i.e., conventional frequency amplification (CFA), frequency compression amplification (FCA) and amplification up to 1.7fe (1.7feA). Results: The FCA was better than CFA as well as 1.7feA at 0.5 kHz. However, at 4 kHz CFA was better than FCA as well as 1.7 feA. Further, the speech identification scores in all the three fitting strategies resulted in similar performance using high frequency words. It was also revealed that the FCA was better than CFA and 1.7 feA though these outcomes were not significantly different. The SNR-50 measures with FCA showed little benefit in comparison with the other two strategies which were similar in the older adults with cochlear dead regions. Friedman’s test results indicated that using a CFA, FCA and 1.7feA strategies there was a significant difference between all the three strategies in the frequencies 0.5 kHz and 4 kHz. Wilcoxon signed ranks test between these three strategies on the aided thresholds revealed that there was a significant difference between each strategy. At 500 Hz FCA was better when compared to CFA and 1.7 feA. But at 4000 Hz CFA was better than FCA and 1.7 feA. In SNR-50 measures results revealed CFA strategy was better when compared to FCA strategy. Conclusion Similar benefit with all the three aided conditions was noted using the three fitting strategies on aided thresholds and speech identification in quiet. Improved performance was evident for the SNR-50 measure when using conventional frequency and amplification up to 1.7feA when compared to the FCA.