Active clinical trials for "Hearing Loss"

The current standard of care approach for programming cochlear implants uses a generalized pitch-map for all patients. This approach fails to account for individualized inner ear anatomy. As a result, many cochlear implant recipients experience place-pitch mismatch. We have recently developed an automated mathematical tool to produce patient-specific, customized cochlear implant pitch-maps (Helpard et al., 2021). In this study, cochlear implant recipients will be randomized to receive either the clinical default pitch-map (the control group) or a place-based pitch-map (the intervention group). Assessments will be conducted at multiple time-intervals to account for patient acclimation and plasticity to both the generalized and individualized pitch-maps. Audiological assessments will be tuned to identify patients' ability to discern pitch scaling and variation in sounds, as well as to understand complexities in speech such as mood and tone. Audiological testing will be conducted in collaboration with the National Centre for Audiology (London, ON) to ensure that the most accurate and relevant metrics are applied.

Single-sided deafness (SSD) refers to severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss on one side (average pure-tone hearing threshold≥70 dB HL at 0.5, 1, 2, and 4kHz) while the opposite side maintains normal hearing or mild hearing loss (30 dB HL). Asymmetrical hearing loss (AHL) refers to severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss in the bad ear (average pure-tone hearing threshold≥70 dB HL at 0.5, 1, 2, and 4kHz) and mild to moderate hearing loss in the contralateral ear. Moderate hearing loss (30≤mean pure-tone hearing threshold≤55dBHL). It is generally acknowledged that SSD is a particular clinical manifestation of AHL. The number of people who have hearing loss accounts for 5.3% of the total population, with children for 9%. According to the Second National Sampling Survey on Disabled Persons, China has 27.8 million people with hearing disabilities. The incidence of SSD adults in the United States is 7.2%, with 60,000 new cases per year, compared with 7,500 new patients with SSD annually in the UK. The incidence of SSD in neonates is 0.04%-0.34%, and it ranges from 0.1% to 0.5% in children and adolescents. The etiology of congenital SSD is primarily unknown, which is related to genes. Among the causes of acquired SSD, sudden deafness is the most common. Other causes include head trauma, Meniere's disease, labyrinthitis, unilateral acoustic neuroma, middle ear surgery, ototoxic drug exposure, Virus infection, noise-induced deafness, senile deafness, etc. SSD and AHL impede intellectual development and speech development in children and adolescents, which is associated with the side of hearing loss. For example, children with right-sided hearing loss have relatively poor language learning, logical thinking, and divergent thinking. In contrast, children with left-sided hearing loss have weaker analytical, comprehensive and visual memory abilities and relatively poor spatial imagination and visual-motor coordination. In addition, the lack of long-term monaural listening and sound source localization makes SSD children require excessive concentration, which is prone to fatigue and behavioral problems, and their academic performance is lower than that of normal children.

The aim of the study is to assess the continued efficacy and safety of cochlear implantation in participants aged 5 years and above with Unilateral Hearing Loss (UHL)/Single Sided Deafness (SSD) supporting a change indication for use.

Twenty people with hearing impairment will be tested and fitted binaurally with hearing aids. During a real-world listening situation, each participant will be asked to compare one program with a novel algorithm to one with a standard microphone configuration. They will provide ratings on a range of outcome measures including overall preference and awareness of background noise. Overall and specific preferences for the different programs/algorithms will be determined by their subjective responses to determine if there is a significant difference between the two programs.

This project aims to characterize the emergence of music appreciation in people who have suffered hearing loss and have been provided with partial restoration of hearing through cochlear implantation. Music appreciation is complex and transverses multiple domains including hearing acuity, speech and language acquisition, and quality of life. By studying these relationships in people who have been given partial hearing restoration, the investigators will clarify the role of music for promoting recovery from debilitating loss.

Satisfaction and benefit from hearing aids fit using two patient self fit methods will be compared against those fit using audiology-based best practices. Individuals between the ages of 50 and 79 years of age will be randomly assigned to one of three fitting methods. Benefit and satisfaction will be evaluated six weeks and six months after the initial fitting.

The objective of this study is to validate the User-operated Audiometry (UAud) system for user-operated audiometry in a clinical setting, by investigating if hearing rehabilitation based on UAud is non-inferior to hearing rehabilitation 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.

Hearing-aid (HA) users with insufficient HA may be better helped with a "Bimodal solution" when replacing the HA with a Cochlear implant (CI) to the poorer hearing ear and a HA to the better hearing ear. This randomised controlled trial can show the benefit in terms of better speech perception of the bimodal solution with CI to the poorest hearing ear compared to binaural hearing aids. It can clarify if HAs users with insufficient HAs benefit will benefit from the bimodal solution when adding a CI to the poorer hearing ear in terms of better speech perception. It can report the degree of perceived hearing handicap in bimodal CI-users versus bilateral HA-users by hearing -specific patient reported outcome measures (PROM) questionnaires. And it can contribute to a specific cochlear implant candidacy criterion related to the transition from HA treatment to the CI treatment. The purpose of this study is to determine if bimodal treatment with a hearing aid to the better hearing ear and CI to the poorer hearing ear increases the ability to understand speech and improve quality of life compared to patients that are treated with hearing aids only. The benefit of bimodal fittings compared to the best possible bilateral HA treatment will be evaluated.

Severe to profound hearing loss affects 0,8% of the global population. For these people, a conventional hearing aid often does not provide sufficient benefit. However, these people can benefit from a cochlear implant (CI). A CI needs to be individually programmed (fitted) for each recipient. A fitting "map" is defined as a set of electrical parameters that are individually adapted to a recipient's needs to achieve optimal sound perception. At present, most CI recipients are fitted with a default frequency allocation map that doesn't take individual variability in size and shape of the cochlea into account. In this study, a fitting strategy based on the post-operative CT scan, that will allow the audiologist to set a frequency-band distribution for CI fitting that may be more closely aligned to the natural tonotopic frequency distribution of a normal hearing cochlea, will be evaluated.

Severe to profound hearing loss affects 0,8% of the global population. For these people, a conventional hearing aid often does not provide sufficient benefit. However, these people can benefit from a cochlear implant (CI). A CI needs to be individually programmed (fitted) for each recipient. A fitting "map" is defined as a set of electrical parameters that are individually adapted to a recipient's needs to achieve optimal sound perception. At present, most CI recipients are fitted with a default frequency allocation map that doesn't take individual variability in size and shape of the cochlea into account. In this study, a fitting strategy based on the post-operative CT scan, that will allow the audiologist to set a frequency-band distribution for CI fitting that may be more closely aligned to the natural tonotopic frequency distribution of a normal hearing cochlea, will be evaluated. This study will focus on patients that are already implanted with the HEARO robotic system.