An interventional study of hearing aid -novel program and hearing aid - standard program in Hearing Loss, sponsored by Sonova AG. Recruiting at 1 site in Canada. Open to participants aged 18 Years to 99 Years, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2023-09-07.
Sponsored by Sonova AG · Not applicable, Interventional, and Treatment
Twenty people with hearing impairment will be tested and fitted binaurally with hearing aids. During a real-world listening situation, each participant will be asked to compare one program with a novel algorithm to one with a standard microphone configuration. They will provide ratings on a range of outcome measures including overall preference and awareness of background noise. Overall and specific preferences for the different programs/algorithms will be determined by their subjective responses to determine if there is a significant difference between the two programs.
People with hearing loss/impairment often have difficulty not only hearing certain sounds (e.g., environmental and speech sounds) but also listening in certain situations such as those where noise competes with speech. This is a common situation in people's real life conversations and one which different hearing instrument algorithms could facilitate.
This study will investigate the listening preferences of people with hearing impairment while wearing hearing aids. They will listen to speech in a situation which is commonly reported as difficult for people who wear hearing aids. Participants will wear one set of hearing aids set to their hearing loss with two programs providing these different algorithms. By having the participants toggle (with a remote control) back and forth between algorithms designed for these real-life difficult listening situations, they can rate their preferences and listening experiences.
Of particular interest, in addition to overall preference, are ratings of the background noise, listening effort and annoyance of artefacts.
Subjects fulfilling all of the following inclusion criteria are eligible for the investigation:
Hearing loss within the fitting ranges of the investigational products.
Exclusion Criteria:
The hearing aids will be worn in two different programs, each with a different microphone configuration. The participants will listen to speech while wearing the hearing aids and alternate programs to form their opinions about these programs; they will only know that they are rating different settings, not what the settings are. They will then rate their listening experiences via rating scales to determine their preferences.
Device: hearing aid -novel program · Device: hearing aid - standard program
novel microphone configuration
standard microphone configuration
Overall preference for a specific microphone setting/configuration
Rating of preference on a scale from 0-100, with descriptors ('very low' to 'very high')
Time frame: 20 minutes
Rating of awareness of background noise
Scale from 0-100 with descriptors ('not at all' to 'extremely aware')
Time frame: 20 minutes
Rating of Listening effort
Scale from 1 - 7 with descriptors ('not at all' to 'very')
Time frame: 20 minutes
Rating of annoyance of artefacts
Rating on a scale from 0-100 with descriptors ('not at all' to 'extremely annoying')
Time frame: 20 minutes
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Sonova AG