View clinical trials related to Hearing Loss.
Filter by:The objective of this study is to develop and assess the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of a community-delivered, affordable, and accessible hearing care intervention tailored to the needs of community-dwelling Korean American (KA) older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and their care partners that integrates a low-cost over-the-counter amplification device and hearing rehabilitation through a randomized controlled pilot study. Each dyad will consist of the study participant and their care partner.
Children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing (D/HH) are at risk of speech and language delays, which can be mitigated through early identification and intervention. Identifying hearing loss (HL) during preschool is crucial, but the most effective hearing screening method for preschoolers remains uncertain. The purpose of this study is to learn whether, compared to the gold-standard two-stage Pure-tone audiometry (PTA) + otoacoustic emissions (OAE) screening (TS-PO), single-stage OAE (SS-O) screening alone is not inferior at identifying hearing loss when performed in a community-based preschool setting. This study holds the potential to improve early hearing loss detection and intervention among D/HH children, reducing the likelihood of speech and language delays. A diverse group of 28,000 preschool-age children across community-based preschool centers will be recruited. The intervention involves all subjects undergoing both PTA and OAE screening, with the order determined through randomization. Children who show potential hearing issues based on screening results or teacher concerns will receive further testing to determine the final hearing outcome. Group allocation will be post-hoc, based on their screening results. In addition to the primary objective, the study will compare other hearing screening measures and outcomes between the two methods (TS-PO and SS-O). This approach aims to reflect the real-life effectiveness of hearing screening in a diverse population. Ultimately, the study seeks to provide insights into an optimal hearing screening method that could prevent speech and language delays among D/HH children.
Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) is among the most prevalent chronic conditions in aging and has a profoundly negative effect on speech comprehension, leading to increased social isolation, reduced quality of life, and increased risk for the development of dementia in older adulthood. Typical audiological tests and interventions, which focus on measuring and restoring audibility, do not explain the full range of cognitive difficulties that adults with hearing loss experience in speech comprehension. For example, adults with SNHL have to work disproportionally harder to decode acoustically degraded speech. That additional effort is thought to diminish shared executive and attentional resources for higher-level language processes, impacting subsequent comprehension and memory, even when speech is completely intelligible. This phenomenon has been referred to as listening effort (LE). There is a growing understanding that these cognitive factors are a critical and often "hidden effect" of hearing loss. At the same time, the effects of LE on the neural mechanisms of language processing and memory in SNHL are currently not well understood. In order to develop evidence-based assessments and interventions to improve comprehension and memory in SNHL, it is critical that we elucidate the cognitive and neural mechanisms of LE and its consequences for speech comprehension. In this project, we adopt a multi-method approach, combining methods from clinical audiology, psycholinguistics, and cognitive neuroscience to address this gap of knowledge. Specifically, we adopt a novel and innovative method of co-registering pupillometry (a reliable physiological measure of LE) and language-related event-related brain potential (ERP) measures during real-time speech processing to characterize the effects of clear speech (i.e., a listener-oriented speaking style that is spontaneously adopted to improve intelligibility when speakers are aware of a perception difficulty on behalf of the listener) on high-level language processes (e.g., semantic retrieval, syntactic integration) and subsequent speech memory in older adults with SNHL. This innovative work addresses a time-sensitive gap in the literature regarding the identification of objective and reliable markers of specific neurocognitive processes impacted by speech clarity and LE in age-related SNHL.
One of the most significant challenges in cochlear implant programming, particularly for very young children and those with an associated pathologies, is the measurement of subjective comfort levels (= C-Subjective). Currently, to define this C-Subjective level, patients are presented with a loudness scale and must indicate whether the sound stimulus, sent via the implant, is soft, comfortable, or loud. The lower and upper stimulation levels must be determined for each electrode in order to program the implant. For many patients this can be difficult due to a lack of auditory experience and confusion between the sensation of sound intensity (weak or loud) and frequency (low or high). A less commonly used but more objective approach to programming upper stimulation levels involves the use of the electrical stapedial reflex threshold (eSRTs) value. eSRTs are a promising measure, given the demonstrated correlation between the threshold that generates a stapedial reflex and the C-subjective level. Furthermore, eSRTs can be recorded in the majority of patients, and can typically be evoked at a comfortable stimulation level i.e. inferior to the uncomfortable level. The main objective of this study is investigate the link between subjective comfort levels (C-subjective levels) and the eSRT.
The Bonebridge (BB) is a partially implantable active transcutaneous bone conduction hearing system manufactured by MED-EL Elektromedizinische Geräte Gesellschaft m.b.H. (MED-EL, Innsbruck, Austria). The BB augments hearing by providing acoustic input to the inner ear via bone conduction. In 2017 Hodgetts & Scollie introduced a new fitting algorithm called DSL-BCD. The DSL-BCD algorithm was developed especially for the characteristics of bone conduction devices (BCD). If there is a benefit on the patient level in hearing outcomes when comparing the application of DSL-BCD in comparison to DSL v5 when using the BB, was not yet investigated. The aim of this clinical study is to show the improvement in audiological performance and subjective satisfaction with the BCI602 and SAMBA 2 audio processor in patients with conductive hearing loss compared to the unaided condition and to evaluate performance differences through application of 2 different fitting algorithms, namely DSL v5 and DSL-BCD.
The study will follow a cohort of CI-candidates becoming CI-user, till two years postoperative. A through-out assessment of both their audiological and vestibular status will be carried out at multiple fixed timepoints over 2 years, evaluating both subjective (patients reported) and objective outcomes over time. For the audiological part of the study both pure-tone and speech audiometry results will be held against the patient perceived benefit of the treatment as assessed by the questionnaires NCIQ and SSQ-12. The vestibular part of the study will evaluate the function of the SCCs and the sacculus. This is will be put in concert with functional tests of the vestibular system, and the patient perceived outcome measure DHI. Correlations between vestibular and audiological performances will be examined. A collection of specific hypotheses will be tested by predefined statistical methods.
This is an observational study to examine the characteristics of gene-related hearing loss in pediatric participants with biallelic otoferlin (OTOF) Mutations, Gap Junction Beta 2 (GJB2) Mutations, or Digenic GJB2/Gap Junction Beta 6 (GJB6) Mutations. This study will follow the participant for 4 years with annual visits each year.
Building upon the HEARS audiologist-community health worker (CHW) model, this study intervention will be delivered by a speech-language pathologist (SLP). The primary objective of the study is to develop and test an affordable and accessible hearing rehabilitative intervention that will be delivered by a SLP to individuals with cognitive impairment.
Mutual exclusivity is a word learning constraint in which the learner assumes that a given word refers to only one category of objects. In spoken languages, mutual exclusivity has been demonstrated in monolingual children as young as 17 months and cross-linguistically, while multilingual learners show an attenuated mutual exclusivity bias. Mutual exclusivity has not been robustly demonstrated in deaf children acquiring American Sign Language (ASL). Further, it is unclear if mutual exclusivity applies to those learning both a signed and a spoken language. Like unimodal bilinguals, bimodal bilingual (BiBi) children learn two words for an object, but these words are separated by modality. A BiBi child could therefore assume that all objects have two words (like unimodal bilinguals) or that all objects have one spoken word and one sign (within-modality mutual exclusivity). The goals of the current study are to demonstrate mutual exclusivity in monolingual deaf children acquiring ASL, and to determine if BiBi deaf children utilize mutual exclusivity within each modality.
The purpose of this clinical trial pilot is to obtain feasibility and pilot data necessary to inform the hearing intervention being designed for a larger R01 clinical trial that seeks to determine whether best practice hearing aid intervention impacts hearing-related outcomes in adults with hearing loss aged 55 to 75 years. Secondary purposes include: To determine what effects best practice hearing aid intervention has on physical, social, and quality of life outcomes in adults with hearing loss aged 55 to 75 years.