Tone Decay Reconsidered: Preliminary Results of a Prospective Study in Hearing-Aid Users with Moderate to Severe Hearing Loss

Abstract

Among hearing aid (HA) users, there is a considerable variability in word recognition scores (WRSs). This variability is most pronounced among individuals with moderately severe to severe hearing loss. The variability cannot be adequately explained by factors such as pure-tone audiogram, audiogram type or age. This prospective study was designed to investigate the relationship between tone decay (TD) and WRS in a group of HA users with corresponding pure-tone hearing loss. The study population included 22 patients with hearing loss between 50 and 80 dB HL. Aided WRS, unaided WRS and TD were assessed for both ears. TD was found to be frequency-dependent. TD and WRS were correlated, with up to R = −0.66. The TD test was revealed to be a feasible method for explaining variability in WRS among HA users with hearing loss below 80 dB. This may contribute to improved differential diagnostics. The TD test may thus offer a better understanding of the limitations of HA use in the context of cochlear implant candidacy assessment for HA users.

Feasibility of a Cochlear Implant Fitting Approach Based on Phoneme Confusions: Lessons Learned from the AuDiET Study

“…In other words, if those suggested interventions are implemented, improving one phoneme confusion error will deteriorate the other, and vice versa. Therefore, for poorer-performing CI-users, the outcomes of other test paradigms may be more informative, including tone-decay, a test which has been revisited in recent years and is more sensitive to retrocochlear lesions (Schmidt et al, 2024;Wasmann et al, 2018).…”