Hearing aids reduce overestimation in pre-fitting self-assessment

摘要

Objective: When asking about hearing disability, the self-reported answers are not always equivalent to those of their family and neighbors. It is often experienced that family and neighbors indicate more severe hearing disability. Hearing difficulty itself may prevent hearing impaired subjects from understanding the degree of their own hearing disability. If their hearing impairment interferes with self-assessment of unaided hearing ability, it may change after a non-hearing aid user begins using hearing aids. Methods: Thirty-four adults who had almost no experience with using hearing aids participated in this study. Unaided hearing disability was assessed with visual analog scale (VAS) and ten 5-point category scales. The assessment was performed not only by the subject (pre-fitting self-assessment) but also by his/her family members, presumed to be understanding persons regarding the degree of his/her hearing disability (family-assessment). For evaluating the effect of amplification on self-assessment, re-assessment was performed more than three months later (post-fitting self-assessment). The overestimation in the pre-fitting self-assessment and the effect of amplification were investigated in comparison to the family- and post-fitting self-assessments. Results: The pre-fitting self-, family- and post-fitting self-VAS values for total hearing abilities were 50.5 ± 15.6, 45.1 ± 14.7 and 34.3 ± 18.8, respectively. The pre-fitting self-VAS value was significantly higher than the family- and post-fitting self-VAS values (p< 0.05 and p< 0.01, respectively). For the 5-point category scale, the pre-fitting self-assessment was better than the family- and post-fitting self-assessments. Significant differences were observed in 1 and 2 situations, as compared with the family- and post-fitting self-assessments, respectively. These findings suggest the involvement of overestimation in pre-fitting self-assessment and its reduction after amplification with hearing aids. Although the pre-fitting self- and the family-VAS values were independent of the results of audiometric tests, the post-fitting self-VAS value was significantly related to the pure tone threshold and maximum speech recognition score (p< 0.05). Regarding the changes in self-VAS values after amplification, the higher the pre-fitting self-VAS value, the larger the decrease in the self-VAS value. Thus, amplification with hearing aids may reduce overestimation and change self-assessment to reflect the audiometric assessments. Conclusion: The pre-fitting self-assessment of hearing disability involves over estimation which is exacerbated by hearing difficulty. A high pre-fitting VAS value may reflect a large overestimation in hearing ability. This overestimation can be improved by the amplification with hearing aids.