Efficacy and Effectiveness of Evidence-Based Non--Self-Fitting Presets Compared to Prescription Hearing Aid Fittings and a Personal Sound Amplification Product.

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  • Additional Information
    • Subject Terms:
      HEARING aid fitting; STATISTICS; ASSISTIVE listening systems; AUDITORY perception; HEARING aids; SENSORINEURAL hearing loss; CONSUMER attitudes; PRODUCT design; RANDOMIZED controlled trials; COMPARATIVE studies; INCOME; COMMERCIAL product evaluation; BLIND experiment; DESCRIPTIVE statistics; RESEARCH funding; QUESTIONNAIRES; STATISTICAL sampling; CROSSOVER trials; DATA analysis
    • Abstract:
      Purpose: In this study, we compare the efficacy and effectiveness of gain--frequency responses of evidence-based presets developed by our lab for overthe-counter hearing aids to conventional National Acoustic Laboratories' nonlinear fitting procedure, version 2 (NAL-NL2) gain--frequency response and to gain--frequency response of a personal sound amplification product (PSAP). We hypothesized that the hearing aids with our presets would perform better than a PSAP with poor frequency response and comparably to the hearing aid with NAL-NL2 frequency response. Method: We used a single-blinded, randomized cross-over design to compare audibility, speech recognition, sound quality, listening effort, and subjective preferences in 37 participants in laboratory settings and following field trials. Results: The presets developed in our lab showed comparable outcomes to the hearing aids with NAL-NL2 gain--frequency response in most measured domains. Performance with the presets was better than the PSAP gain-- frequency response in the domains of listening effort and sound quality in laboratory testing and speech recognition in our real-world measures. We also found that most participants (54.05%) preferred our presets over the PSAPs and were willing to pay significantly more to purchase the hearing aids with our presets. Conclusion: Our evidence-based presets have better outcomes than a PSAP with a single, poorly suited frequency response while performing comparably to the clinical best-practice National Acoustic Laboratories condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]