Comparison of hearing aid fitting effectiveness with audiograms from either user-operated or traditional audiometry in a clinical setting: a study protocol for a blinded non-inferiority randomised controlled trial

Carl Christian Pedersen; Ellen Raben Pedersen; Søren Laugesen; Raul Sanchez-Lopez; Jacob Nielsen; Chris Bang Sørensen; Christos Sidiras; René Gyldenlund Pedersen; Jesper Hvass Schmidt

doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2022-065777

Comparison of hearing aid fitting effectiveness with audiograms from either user-operated or traditional audiometry in a clinical setting: a study protocol for a blinded non-inferiority randomised controlled trial

BMJ Open. 2023 Mar 2;13(3):e065777. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-065777.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Research Unit for ORL - Head & Neck Surgery and Audiology, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark pede@sdu.dk.
² OPEN, Odense Patient data Explorative Network, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark.
³ The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.
⁴ Interacoustics Research Unit, Lyngby, Denmark.
⁵ Hearing Sciences, Mental Health and Clinical Neurosciences, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.
⁶ Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education (IGDORE), Gothenburg, Sweden.
⁷ Research Unit for ORL - Head & Neck Surgery and Audiology, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.

Abstract

Introduction: There is a worldwide need to enhance the capacity of audiometry testing. The objective of this study is to compare the User-operated Audiometry (UAud) system with traditional audiometry in a clinical setting, by investigating if hearing aid effectiveness based on UAud is non-inferior to hearing aid effectiveness based on traditional audiometry, and whether thresholds obtained with the user-operated version of the Audible Contrast Threshold (ACT) test correlates to traditional measures of speech intelligibility.

Methods and analysis: The design will be a blinded non-inferiority randomised controlled trial. 250 adults referred for hearing aid treatment will be enrolled in the study. Study participants will be tested using both traditional audiometry as well as the UAud system and they will answer the questionnaire Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing Scale (SSQ12) at baseline. Participants will be randomly divided to receive hearing aids fitted based on either UAud or traditional audiometry. Three months after participants have started using their hearing aids, they will undergo a hearing in noise test with hearing aids to measure their speech-in-noise performance and answer the following questionnaires: SSQ12, the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit and the International Outcome Inventory for Hearing Aids. The primary outcome is a comparison of the change in SSQ12 scores from baseline to follow-up between the two groups. Participants will undergo the user-operated ACT test of spectro-temporal modulation sensitivity as part of the UAud system. The ACT results will be compared with measures of speech intelligibility from the traditional audiometry session and follow-up measurements.

Ethics and dissemination: The project was evaluated by the Research Ethics Committee of Southern Denmark and judged not to need approval. The findings will be submitted to an international peer-reviewed journal and presented at national and international conferences.

Trial registration number: NCT05043207.

Keywords: Audiology; Health informatics; Quality in health care.

Publication types

Clinical Trial Protocol
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
Audiometry
Hearing
Hearing Aids*
Hearing Tests
Humans
Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic
Speech Intelligibility

Associated data

ClinicalTrials.gov/NCT05043207