View clinical trials related to Deafness.
Filter by:Insertion of electrode array in scala vestibuli, rather than the preferred location within scala tympani, leads to loss of native hearing in those patients with isolated high-frequency hearing loss undergoing cochlear implantation.
Our goal is to design and build a new hearing aid system, which mitigates the most common complaints that hearing aid users have. These include hearing in multi-talker situations, poor sound quality, unwanted whistling resulting from feedback, and a dislike of the sound of their own voice. Current efforts, with limited success, use signal processing methods rather than restoring more closely the normal auditory function. We plan to achieve our goal by reducing to practice three key enabling concepts. The first is to replace the current acoustic transducer with a non-acoustic mechanical output transducer that directly actuates the tympanic membrane. This transducer, called the EarLens, floats on the tympanic membrane in a manner similar to the way a contract lens floats on the eye. The second is to increase the output bandwidth of the hearing aid. The third key concept is to place a wide-bandwidth microphone in the ear canal to capture the pinna diffraction cues similarly to the way the normal ear functions. Our central hypothesis is that a hearing aid that delivers amplified wide-bandwidth mechanical stimuli, directionally dependent cues, in an open canal configuration will perform better than conventional hearing aids when there are competing talkers in the background.
The incidence of central auditory dysfunction in war fighters who are exposed to high-explosive blasts while serving in combat have not been clearly determined. The objectives of this study are to determine whether central auditory processing (CAP) disorders are associated with exposure to high-explosive blasts. This study will also examine the incidence, magnitude and timing of spontaneous recovery of CAP function from blast exposure. The information provided by this study will help guide clinicians in both the military and VA health care systems regarding the likelihood of central auditory processing disorders in soldiers returning from deployment and suggest some clinical rehabilitative strategies for the treatment of these patients with CAP deficits.
This study will examine whether oral intake of 1200mg N-Acetylcysteine/day will prevent temporary threshold shift in hearing among workers exposed to noise
People with intellectual disability die five to twenty years earlier than the general population. They also experience high levels of unrecognised disease and receive inadequate levels of health promotion or screening. Although they comprise 2.7% of our population (502 000 Australians) they receive scant, if any, attention in the health literature. The barriers to good health for this population include: communication difficulties, impaired recall of significant health information, and inadequate training of health service providers. This project attempts to minimise some of these barriers through the use of a Health Intervention Package. Use of this package has been evaluated in adults, but not in adolescents, with intellectual disability. The Health Intervention Package includes a comprehensive health review, called the Comprehensive Health Assessment Program (CHAP), which is performed by the adolescent's general practitioner, and a diary, the Ask diary, used to collect and store health information and to enhance health advocacy skills. We specifically aim to test if adolescents with intellectual disability using this package will receive better health screening and prevention (our primary outcomes). We also aim to test if using the package results in improved health advocacy by adolescents with intellectual disability and their parents (our secondary outcomes). The tool should also be acceptable to those involved (another secondary outcome). To investigate these aims we propose a clustered randomised controlled trial, a methodology we have used successfully in two previous trials. We will recruit 1000 adolescents (and their carers and teachers) in Special Education Schools and Special Education Units in Queensland. The CHAP health review aims to produce shorter-term benefits of improved health screening/promotion and disease detection, such as increased sensory testing, identification of vision or hearing impairment, and improved immunisation rates. The Ask diary is intended to produce longer-term benefits such as improved communication about health matters, improved health advocacy skills, improved health record keeping, and increased health maintenance.
Two major limitations of existing audiometric newborn hearing screening programs are their inability to detect forms of deafness that are not expressed at birth and the low compliance with obtaining recommended audiologic confirmation and/or follow-up. Molecular genetic tests on blood spots from all newborns will identify those at risk for the most frequent causes of late-onset hearing loss and to add these infants to the group who should receive continued audiologic monitoring.
The purpose of this study is to determine whether chronic electrical stimulation of the primary auditory cortex is effective in the treatment of chronic, severe and intractable tinnitus
Directional microphone hearing aids have been shown to provide benefit for individuals with hearing loss in a number of laboratory experiments. However, few studies have investigated the real-world, subject-reported benefit from these hearing aids, and even fewer have examined directional hearing aid benefit across varying degrees of hearing loss. This study will summarize data from a three-year, multi-faceted study of directional hearing aid benefit. Ninety four subjects were divided into three hearing loss groups (normal-to-moderate, mild-to-moderately-severe, and moderate-to-profound). These subjects were then fit with experimental hearing aids set to either directional or omnidirectional mode to determine if significant differences were present in hearing aid outcomes (both subjective and objective). Both subject and experimenter were blinded to the hearing aid settings. Following one month of use in each experimental setting, subjects completed: probe microphone measurements, speech understanding in noise testing, use questionnaires, subjective benefit scales, and satisfaction scales. At the conclusion of the study, subjects rated their preferences for the experimental settings in quiet, noise and overall. Both objective measures, as well as subjective data, were analyzed across hearing aid and hearing loss conditions.
The aim of the research is to investigate phonological processing in deafness and to examine its influence on the neuroanatomy of reading.The basic hypothesis is that insofar as the ability to read is closely related to the ability to segment and represent speech units, the neuroanatomy of reading in deaf would be different from the one of hearing readers.
Tinnitus associated to hearing loss is a high prevalent audiologic disorder with important unmet needs as far as therapy is concerned. The present study is exploring the possible beneficial effects on tinnitus loudness or annoyance of a combination drug treatment aimed to increase the local inhibitory activity of neural circuitries involved in sound perception and generation. Modest effects have been reported after 8-12 weeks treatment with antidepressants, including high dose paroxetine (up to 50 mg/day). Biologic data suggests that the combination of increase of extracellular serotonin using an SSRI and of blockade of NK1 receptors using a novel NK1 antagonist may lead to a reduced tinnitus and, possibly, improved hearing acuity. To this aim, two 14 day treatment conditions, i.e., SSRI paroxetine (20 mg/day) plus the NK1 antagonist vestipitant (25mg /day) or vestipitant alone (25 mg /day), will be compared to placebo in patients suffering from tinnitus previously selected for their capacity to reliably score the transient attenuation of tinnitus loudness produced by lidocaine infusion. Effects on principal endpoints will be collected within 4 hrs from last administration, when the plasma levels of vestipitant are calculated to be in the range associated to pharmacodynamic effects on VAS anxiety and qEEG (>30 ng/ml). PK, safety and tolerability of the paroxetine-vestipitant combination was addressed with preclinical and Phase I studies, showing no relevant issue. The cross-over study will require approximately 24 patients. Audiometry and computer-based Automated Psychoacoustics will be performed as instrumental endpoints to support subjective scores. A diary will be used at home to score tinnitus severity at home during the study.