Evaluating Device-based Rehabilitation for Veterans With Functional Hearing Difficulties: A Randomized Controlled Trial
VA Office of Research and Development
Summary
Every year, approximately 100,000 Veterans seek help at VA Audiology clinics for hearing and communication difficulties only to learn that they have normal hearing sensitivity. Unfortunately, there are very few established options to improve hearing and listening for these patients. To address this need, audiologists are increasingly prescribing hearing aids set to provide a small amount of amplification. Patients may benefit from the amplification or from modern hearing aid features such as noise reduction technology and the ability to stream sounds from a desired sound source directly to their ears thus reducing the background noise. This project will help to determine if prescribing hearing aids to patients without hearing loss is, in fact, beneficial and if so, why. It will also help to determine if some patients benefit more from hearing aids than others so that in the future, rehabilitation strategies can be better targeted toward individuals.
Description
At least 10% of Veterans seeking help in VA audiology clinics have clinically normal audiograms, a figure that broadly confirms a recent prevalence study indicating that 33.6% of current active-duty military Service Members are at risk of hearing and communication deficits despite having normal-hearing thresholds. While a considerable amount of research effort over the past 20 years has been devoted to understanding the potential causes for hearing difficulties in patients with normal hearing sensitivity, comparatively little research effort has been devoted to rehabilitation and improvement o…
Eligibility
- Age range
- 18–79 years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- No
Inclusion Criteria: * Veteran eligible for VA Healthcare * Ability to travel to VA Portland Medical Center for repeated visits * Pure-tone thresholds of no more than 30 dB HL at frequencies between 500 and 3000 Hz, and no more than 40 dB HL at 4000 Hz * HHIA scores of 24 or greater indicating moderate to significant perceived hearing handicap Exclusion Criteria: * Conductive hearing loss or other significant otologic problems * Non-native English speakers * Inability to perform experimental tasks * Pure-tone interaural threshold asymmetries greater than 15 dB between 250 and 4000 Hz
Interventions
- BehavioralCommunication Counseling
Individuals randomized to this group will receive information on how to improve their ability to hear and communicate including general tips on environmental modification and communication repair strategies and personalized tips to help with patient-specific listening difficulties. This is consistent with current audiological standard of care.
- DeviceHearing Aids
Hearing aids will be provided with amplification settings programmed specific to each participant's pure-tone hearing thresholds with subsequent adjustments based upon participant preferences. Standard noise cancelation and signal-to-noise ratio improvement strategies will be activated.
- DeviceRemote Microphones
Remote microphone systems will be provided for use with hearing aids.
Location
- VA Portland Health Care System, Portland, ORPortland, Oregon