Background: The study was aimed at investigating the knowledge of awareness of hearing health, risk factors causing hearing loss and preventive measures for hearing disability at natal stages and awareness regarding the intervention among the pregnant women and mothers of newborn in urban area i.e. in Bhubaneswar.Methods: 53 pregnant women and 103 mothers of newborn had participated in the present study and were agreed to provide their awareness regarding the questionnaire related to selected parameters their responses were scored and documented for the statistics.Results: Results indicates that mothers were more aware of the selected parameters like risk factors during natal stages, intervention as compared to pregnant women. Mothers (66.01%) and pregnant women (56.22%) were more aware of prenatal risk factors as compared to peri and postnatal. Almost 60% of total participants were aware of hearing health and intervention for hearing loss. Two-way ANOVA was computed. p<0.0001, indicates statistically significant difference between the selected parameters i.e. awareness of hearing health and intervention and awareness of risk factors and prevention for hearing impairment at natal stages. Post hoc analysis (using unpaired t test by applying Bonferroni correction) suggestive of statistically significant difference of selected parameters from each other among pregnant women and mothers with p=0.0002.Conclusions: It is very much important to utilize the existing knowledge of the grass root level people like mothers and pregnant women by acquiring their ideas and information regarding the awareness of occurrence of hearing impairment in children which can be done only by spreading adequate information regarding hearing disability.

The study investigated the effect of filtered speech stimulus on speech perception performance of native speakers of Marathi as a function of degree of hearing impairment. Speech identification score (SIS) testing was performed to measure speech perception on three groups (Group I, Group II, and Group III consisted of participants with moderate, moderately-severe, and severe sensorineural hearing impairment respectively). Speech stimuli comprised eight word-lists with each list consisting of 25 words in Marathi. The first seven word-lists (first to seven) were filtered at 500 Hz, 1000 Hz, 1500 Hz, 2000 Hz, 2500 Hz, 3000 Hz, and 3500 Hz cut-off frequencies, respectively, while word list 8 was left unfiltered. Although, the SIS improved with increase in cut-off frequency, the improvement in SIS with increase in cut-off frequency of speech stimulus was noticed up to 3000 Hz, 2500 Hz, and 2000 Hz for participants of Group I, Group II, and Group III, respectively. In addition, the improvement in speech perception performance did not correspond to what would be anticipated with an increase in the cut-off frequency of speech stimulus for participants of Group II and Group III compared to participants of Group I. Although, there was a significant reduction in SIS as a function of the degree of hearing impairment for speech stimulus filtered at 1500 Hz, 2000 Hz, 2500 Hz, and 3000 Hz cut-off frequencies, there was no significant effect of degree of hearing impairment on SIS for speech stimulus filtered at 500 Hz and 1000 Hz cut-off frequencies.

The placebo effect is the reduction of a symptom or a change in the psychological parameters when an inert treatment is administered to a subject who is told that it is an active therapy with specific properties. The use of placebo is not equivalent to the absence of treatment, for example, placebo could be used in addition to standard care. In all cases, its use should be associated with measures to minimize exposure and avoid irreversible harm. (Placebo in clinical trials U. Gupta and M. Verma , 2013)