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Ear Hear 2021 Feb 4. Epub 2021 Feb 4.

1Amsterdam UMC, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Ear & Hearing, Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 2Amsterdam UMC, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 3Research & Development, Sonova AG, Stäfa, Switzerland.

Objective: To identify predictors of the 5-year uptake of hearing aids (HAs) and hearing assistive technology (HAT) in a sample of Dutch employees eligible for HAs and/or HAT. The potential predictors included demographic factors (age, sex, marital status, and living situation), education, hearing factors (ability to recognize speech in noise and self-reported hearing disability), distress, self-efficacy, and work-related factors (job demand, job control, and need for recovery).

Design: Five-year follow-up data of the Netherlands Longitudinal Study on Hearing (NL-SH) collected until January 2019 were included. Read More

Ear Hear 2021 Apr 8. Epub 2021 Apr 8.

1Army Hearing Program, U.S. Army Public Health Center, Aberdeen, Maryland, USA 2Audiology and Speech Pathology Center, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, USA 3ORISE Fellow, Army Hearing Program, U.S. Army Public Health Center, Aberdeen, Maryland, USA.

Objectives: Many individuals with noise-related hearing loss continue working in environments where they are periodically exposed to high levels of noise, which increases their risk for further hearing loss. These individuals often must remove their hearing aids in operational environments because of incompatibility with the mandated personal protective equipment, thus reducing situational awareness. Extended-wear hearing aids might provide a solution for these individuals because they can be worn for weeks or months at a time, protect users from high-level noise exposures, and are compatible with communication headsets, earmuffs, and other types of personal protective equipment. Read More

R Soc Open Sci 2021 Feb 17;8(2):201345. Epub 2021 Feb 17.

Eriksholm Research Centre, Snekkersten, Denmark.

We investigate the short-term association between multidimensional acoustic characteristics of everyday ambient sound and continuous mean heart rate. We used in-market data from hearing aid users who logged ambient acoustics via smartphone-connected hearing aids and continuous mean heart rate in 5 min intervals from their own wearables. We find that acoustic characteristics explain approximately 4% of the fluctuation in mean heart rate throughout the day. Read More

Ear Nose Throat J 2021 May 11:1455613211013093. Epub 2021 May 11.

ENT Department, L. Vanvitelli University, Naples, Italy.

Introduction: Surgical treatment of patients with far-advanced otosclerosis (FAO) has not yet been standardized. Patients with FAO are the candidates for stapes surgery or cochlear implant (CI). Although many surgeons consider stapes surgery as the first choice, other authors prefer CI because of the excellent hearing results. Read More

Int Arch Otorhinolaryngol 2021 Apr 30;25(2):e258-e266. Epub 2020 Jun 30.

Speech TherapyProgram, Faculdade de Odontologia de Bauru (FOB), Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Bauru, São Paulo, Brazil.

 Tinnitus is a prevalent symptom in audiological clinics, and the speech therapist participates in the assessment, diagnosis, and intervention of tinnitus. A range of studies have been developed with the aim to promote auditory health, and telehealth is an option for this purpose.  The aim of the present study was to develop and assess a virtual platform for tinnitus management for speech therapists. Read More

Int Arch Otorhinolaryngol 2021 Apr 23;25(2):e235-e241. Epub 2020 Jun 23.

Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Hospital das Clínicas, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.

 The use of cochlear implants and hearing aids (bimodal) has been growing with the expansion of the indication for them, and it is important to ensure protocols so that there is a balance of the loudness regarding the two devices.  To evaluate if the limited complex sounds present in the frequency bands of the current devices enable the balance of the loudness in adult users of bimodal stimulation, and to analyze if speech recognition improves after balancing.  A prospective cross-sectional study with convenience sampling. Read More

Int Arch Otorhinolaryngol 2021 Apr 23;25(2):e205-e212. Epub 2020 Jun 23.

Faculdade de Odontologia de Bauru, Universidade de São Paulo, Bauru, SP, Brazil.

 Tinnitus is a disorder that affects 10 to 15% of de world's population. Sound therapy performed through hearing aids (HAs) with integrated sound generator (SG) is one of the forms of tinnitus treatment.  To analyze the effectiveness of four masking noises in relieving tinnitus in individuals with mild and moderate bilateral sensorineural hearing loss and their influence in speech perception. Read More

Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol 2021 May 7. Epub 2021 May 7.

Department of ENT, Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust, Ward 29 Charlesworth Building, Fountain Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, OL6 9RW, UK.

Purpose: Hearing loss affects many older people and is associated with social isolation and loneliness. The impact of hearing interventions however has not been established. The objective of this review is to determine the impact of hearing interventions in older people with hearing loss on social isolation and loneliness. Read More

Int J Pediatr Otorhinolaryngol 2021 Apr 27;146:110739. Epub 2021 Apr 27.

National Hospital Organization Tokyo Medical Center, National Institute of Sensory Organs, Tokyo, Japan.

Objectives: To reframe the criteria for pediatric cochlear implants (CIs) in Japan, we investigated monosyllabic and word speech perception at the time of school entry in deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH) children who underwent auditory-verbal therapy (AVT) with hearing aids (HAs) or CIs in early childhood.

Methods: D/HH children who started AVT at Fujimidai Auditory Center for Hearing-Impaired Children before the age of 1 year and who underwent auditory assessment in the previous year of schooling (at the age of 5 or 6) from 2010 to 2020 were enrolled in this study. The results of hearing level tests with or without amplification and monosyllabic and word speech discrimination were assessed. Read More

Ear Hear 2021 May 4. Epub 2021 May 4.

Patient and Population Health and Informatics, Swansea University Medical School, Singleton Park, Swansea, United Kingdom Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia Faculty of Medicine and Health, School of Health Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia HEAR Centre, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

Objectives: Listening effort may be defined as the attentional and cognitive resources needed to understand an auditory message, modulated by motivation. Despite the use of hearing devices such as hearing aids or cochlear implants (CIs), the requirement for high listening effort remains a challenge for individuals with hearing loss. The Listening Effort Questionnaire-Cochlear Implant (LEQ-CI) is a hearing-specific patient-reported outcome measure (PROM), which has been designed for use in the CI candidacy and rehabilitation process to assess perceived listening effort in everyday life in adults with severe-profound hearing loss. Read More

Ear Hear 2021 May 4. Epub 2021 May 4.

Eriksholm Research Centre, Oticon A/S, Snekkersten, Denmark; Hearing Sciences-Scottish Section, Division of Clinical Neuroscience, University of Nottingham, Glasgow, United Kingdom Department of Electrical Engineering, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden Department of Health Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark.

Objectives: The investigation of auditory cognitive processes recently moved from strictly controlled, trial-based paradigms toward the presentation of continuous speech. This also allows the investigation of listening effort on larger time scales (i.e. Read More

Codas 2021 3;33(1):e20190153. Epub 2021 May 3.

Faculdade de Odontologia de Bauru, Universidade de São Paulo - USP - Bauru (SP), Brasil.

Purpose: To verify how the quality of life of children with cochlear implant was evaluated in published studies and to critically analyze which were the influencing variables.

Research Strategy: Research guided by PRISMA recommendations. The guiding question was elaborated based on the PICO strategy, being: "Which variables are considered as influencers on the quality of life of children with cochlear implants?" The selected descriptors were cochlear implants, cochlear implants, quality of life, child and their synonyms, in the Portuguese, English and Spanish languages. Read More

BMJ Case Rep 2021 May 4;14(5). Epub 2021 May 4.

Internal Medicine, University of Florida College of Medicine - Jacksonville, Jacksonville, Florida, USA.

Reversible sensorineural hearing loss is a recognised complication of cryptococcal meningitis. Cryptococcal meningitis typically presents with usual symptoms of fever, headache and neck stiffness. This case highlights acute, profound, bilateral hearing loss as the initial symptom and presentation of cryptococcal meningitis in a young woman, who was later diagnosed with AIDS. Read More

Nat Biomed Eng 2021 May 3. Epub 2021 May 3.

Ear Institute, University College London, London, UK.

In quiet environments, hearing aids improve the perception of low-intensity sounds. However, for high-intensity sounds in background noise, the aids often fail to provide a benefit to the wearer. Here, using large-scale single-neuron recordings from hearing-impaired gerbils-an established animal model of human hearing-we show that hearing aids restore the sensitivity of neural responses to speech, but not their selectivity. Read More

Nat Biomed Eng 2021 May 3. Epub 2021 May 3.

Departments of Otolaryngology, Neurobiology & Behavior, Cognitive Sciences, and Biomedical Engineering, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.

Front Psychol 2021 14;12:608684. Epub 2021 Apr 14.

Department of Medical Physics and Acoustics and Cluster of Excellence Hearing4all, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany.

Auditory scene analysis is an elementary aspect of music perception, yet only little research has scrutinized auditory scene analysis under realistic musical conditions with diverse samples of listeners. This study probed the ability of younger normal-hearing listeners and older hearing-aid users in tracking individual musical voices or lines in JS Bach's . Five-second excerpts with homogeneous or heterogenous instrumentation of 2-4 musical voices were presented from spatially separated loudspeakers and preceded by a short cue for signaling the target voice. Read More

Int J Pediatr Otorhinolaryngol 2021 Apr 18;145:110722. Epub 2021 Apr 18.

Department of ENT Surgery, Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Uganda.

Objective: Infant hearing screening enables early detection and management of hearing loss (HL) so that speech and language development delays are minimized. Parents play a critical role in successful screening and management of Infant Hearing loss (IHL) but there is limited data from resource limited settings on parental knowledge about HL and acceptability of IHL interventions. This study was aimed at exploring the maternal knowledge on the various causes of IHL and their acceptability of hearing aids as an intervention for IHL. Read More

J Am Med Dir Assoc 2021 Apr 28. Epub 2021 Apr 28.

Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom.

Background: Most residents with dementia (RwD) in long-term care (LTC) facilities experience hearing and vision problems, yet these sensory deficits, which are associated with poor outcomes, are frequently under-recognized or incompletely managed.

Objective: We investigated the knowledge, attitudes, and practice (KAP) of LTC facility staff in England regarding sensory-cognitive health of RwD.

Design: A cross-sectional survey using self-administered online or mail-in questionnaires. Read More

Sci Rep 2021 Apr 30;11(1):9384. Epub 2021 Apr 30.

Neuroscience Section, Department of Medicine, Surgery and Dentistry, "Scuola Medica Salernitana", University of Salerno, Salerno, Italy.

Few studies have investigated the neuropsychological profile of Hearing Loss (HL) subjects and the effects of hearing-aid on cognitive decline. We investigated the neuropsychological profile of HL patients at baseline and compared the neuropsychological profiles of patients with and without hearing-aid at 6 month. Fifty-six HL patients and 40 healthy subjects (HC) underwent neuropsychological and behavioral examination and were compared at baseline. Read More

Prog Brain Res 2021 10;262:57-91. Epub 2021 Mar 10.

School of Speech Pathology and Audiology, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada; International Laboratory for Research on Brain, Music, and Sound (BRAMS), Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada. Electronic address:

Tinnitus and hyperacusis are two debilitating conditions that are highly comorbid. It has been postulated that they may originate from similar pathophysiological mechanisms such as an increase in central gain. Interestingly, sound stimulation has been shown to reduce central gain and is currently used for the treatment of both conditions. Read More

Elife 2021 Apr 30;10. Epub 2021 Apr 30.

Dept. of Neurosciences, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.

In a multi-speaker scenario, the human auditory system is able to attend to one particular speaker of interest and ignore the others. It has been demonstrated that it is possible to use electroencephalography (EEG) signals to infer to which speaker someone is attending by relating the neural activity to the speech signals. However, classifying auditory attention within a short time interval remains the main challenge. Read More

Vestn Otorinolaringol 2021 ;86(2):28-32

Pavlov State Medical University, St. Petersburg, Russia.

The Aim Of The Study: To assess speech recognition in users of mono- and binaural hearing aids (HA) with dynamic environment control system (DECS).

Material And Methods: 25 HA users with symmetrical bilateral moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss and 10 individuals with normal hearing underwent speech audiometry in a free sound field by listening to an adaptive Russian matrix sentence test with a background noise. The testing was conducted for hearing impaired patients with one and two HA. Read More

Vestn Otorinolaringol 2021 ;86(2):10-15

Bashkir State Medical University, Ufa, Russia.

PEACH is an important tool for evaluation of children's hearing development, used in age 2-7 years. It is also appropriate for amplification outcomes measurements. PEACH scale includes 13 questions. Read More

Sensors (Basel) 2021 Apr 16;21(8). Epub 2021 Apr 16.

Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine, Kyungpook National University, 680 Gukchaebosang-ro, Jung-gu, Daegu 41944, Korea.

In this study, we developed a new type of wireless transmission system for use in partially implantable hearing aids. This system was designed for miniaturization and low distortion, and features direct digital modulation. The sigma-delta output, which has a high SNR due to oversampling and noise shaping technology, is used as the data signal and is transmitted using a wireless transmission system to the implant unit through OOK without restoration as an audio signal, thus eliminating the need for additional circuits (i. Read More

Int J Mol Sci 2021 Apr 10;22(8). Epub 2021 Apr 10.

Department of Otolaryngology, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL 33136, USA.

Hearing loss is the most common sensory disorder with ~466 million people worldwide affected, representing about 5% of the population. A substantial portion of hearing loss is genetic. Hearing loss can either be non-syndromic, if hearing loss is the only clinical manifestation, or syndromic, if the hearing loss is accompanied by a collage of other clinical manifestations. Read More

Audiol Res 2021 Apr 2;11(2):129-149. Epub 2021 Apr 2.

School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA.

Recent research has established a connection between hearing aid (HA) users' cognition and speech recognition performance with short and long compression release times (RT). Contradictive findings prevent researchers from using cognition to predict RT prescription. We hypothesized that the linguistic context of speech recognition test materials was one of the factors that accounted for the inconsistency. Read More

Front Neurosci 2021 12;15:643205. Epub 2021 Apr 12.

Beijing Institute of Otolaryngology, Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Beijing Tongren Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.

This study was aimed at evaluating improvements in speech-in-noise recognition ability as measured by signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with the use of wireless remote microphone technology. These microphones transmit digital signals via radio frequency directly to hearing aids and may be a valuable assistive listening device for the hearing-impaired population of Mandarin speakers in China. Twenty-three adults (aged 19-80 years old) and fourteen children (aged 8-17 years old) with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss were recruited. Read More

Cognition 2021 Apr 23;212:104684. Epub 2021 Apr 23.

Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Level 3 Australian Hearing Hub, 16 University Ave, NSW 2109, Australia. Electronic address:

Listeners readily anticipate upcoming sentence constituents, however little is known about prediction when the input is suboptimal, such as for children with hearing loss (HL). Here we examined whether children with hearing aids and/or cochlear implants use semantic context to predict upcoming spoken sentence completions. We expected reduced prediction among children with HL, but found they were able to predict similarly to children with normal hearing. Read More

Trends Hear 2021 Jan-Dec;25:2331216521999563

Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness, School of Health Sciences, Manchester, United Kingdom.

This systematic review, the first on this topic, aimed to investigate if probe-tube verification of real-ear hearing aid amplification characteristics improves outcomes in adults. The review was preregistered in the Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews and performed in accordance with the guidelines of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses. After assessing more than 1,420 records from seven databases, six experimental studies (published between 2012 and 2019) met the inclusion criteria; five were included in the meta-analyses. Read More

J Int Adv Otol 2021 Mar;17(2):115-120

School of Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Objective: To investigate whether the magnitude of the right-ear advantage (REA) for speech perception in noise decreased in aided conditions as compared with unaided conditions in older adults bilaterally fitted with hearing aids. A secondary aim was to determine the effect of audibility on the right- and left-ear processing for speech stimuli in both aided and unaided conditions.

Methods: Forty-two older adult, bilateral hearing-aid users were selected. Read More