Abstract
Background: To improve hearing-aid rehabilitation, the Danish ‘Better hEAring Rehabilitation’ (BEAR) project recently developed methods for individual hearing loss characterization and hearing-aid fitting. Four auditory profiles differing in terms of audiometric hearing loss and supra-threshold hearing abilities were identified. To enable auditory profile-based hearing-aid treatment, a fitting rationale leveraging differences in gain prescription and signal-to-noise (SNR) improvement was developed. This report describes the translation of this rationale to clinical devices supplied by three industrial partners. Methods: Regarding the SNR improvement, advanced feature settings were proposed and verified based on free-field measurements made with an acoustic mannikin fitted with the different hearing aids. Regarding the gain prescription, a clinically feasible fitting tool and procedure based on real-ear gain adjustments were developed. Results: Analyses of the collected real-ear gain and SNR improvement data confirmed the feasibility of the clinical implementation. Differences between the auditory profile-based fitting strategy and a current ‘best practice’ procedure based on the NAL-NL2 fitting rule were verified and are discussed in terms of limitations and future perspectives. Conclusion: Based on a joint effort from academic and industrial partners, the BEAR fitting rationale was transferred to commercially available hearing aids.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Audiology Research |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| Pages (from-to) | 564–573 |
| ISSN | 2039-4330 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 9. Oct 2022 |
Keywords
- audiology
- hearing aid
- hearing rehabilitation