Benefit on daily listening with technological advancements: comparison of basic and premium category hearing aids

Abstract

Purpose The aim of the study was to compare the user-rated benefit of two categories of hearing aids, mainly the basic and premium categories of hearing aids. Methods A questionnaire was administered on 102 hearing aids users (47 basic and 55 premium category users) with severity of hearing loss ranging from mild to moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss. The questionnaire administered was divided into mainly seven subscales which included speech intelligibility in quiet and in noise, ease of communication, the efficiency of noise reduction, localization, quality of music perception and cost effectiveness. The effect of duration of daily usage of hearing aids on performance among these different subscales was also assessed. Results Ease of communication was rated better by premium hearing aid users, whereas the cost effectiveness was rated to be better by basic users. There was no significant difference observed between performances of basic versus premium category of hearing aids in other listening domains assessed. There was no significant difference in any of the listening domains with daily usage duration for both categories of hearing aid users. Conclusion The users of premium category devices revealed better ease of communication in daily environments, whereas performance of these devices on other listening domains remains questionable. Cost effectiveness was reported to be better by the users of basic hearing aids. A prospective and controlled paired series comparison of hearing aid performance needs to be performed to confirm these findings. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00405-021-07240-3.

A multimodal fitting approach for the treatment of hearing loss

“…Receiver in the canal (RIC) hearing aids with open fitting or ear mold(s) are all used for the treatment of different types and degrees of hearing loss such as sensorineural, conductive, and/or mixed hearing loss. [6][7][8] The cochlear implant is a prosthesis that electrically bypasses the cochlea and transmits the signals to the brain and is mainly used for the treatment of patients with moderate-to-profound hearing loss with poor word recognition scores who cannot benefit from conventional hearing aids. Moreover, it is useful for the treatment of patients with single-sided deafness or SSD.…”