Improving hearing aid fitting in children

A study being carried out in Cambridge by Professor Brian Moore and colleagues is investigating the effectiveness of the current procedures in hearing aid fitting when applied to children.

[Project grant, 2005-2008]

The study follows a major change in the management of childhood hearing loss in the UK after the introduction of neonatal hearing screening, which potentially brings large benefits from early identification of hearing loss.

The fitting of hearing aids in paediatric audiology is based on matching amplification to targets derived from the extent of hearing loss and a prescription method. There are two main prescription methods currently in use, which give rise to very different amounts of amplification for the same hearing levels. However, the relative effectiveness of these methods as applied to children, and their influence on auditory awareness, speech sound detection and speech recognition, has not been evaluated.

This study will compare three different methods for the initial fitting of hearing aids to children. Each child will be tested using the type of digital hearing aids with which they have been fitted under the NHS (but their own aids will not be used for testing and will not be altered in any way). Children with be divided into three age groups (2-4, 4-6 and 6-8 years), each sub-divided according to the severity of hearing loss, and a variety of outcome measures will be used depending on the abilities of each group.

It is hoped that the research will lead to a clear assessment of the relative merits of the different target prescriptions; this should have a major impact on the prescriptions used for fitting hearing aids to children.