Active clinical trials for "Hearing Loss"

Randomized post market study comparing Lyric to Lyric2 capturing information regarding comparative performance and safety.

Study Objectives: 1. To examine the extent to which noise typical of nursing units reduces speech intelligibility in acutely ill hospitalized patients 2. To examine the extent to which noise typical of nursing units impairs recall in acutely ill hospitalized patients 3. To quantify severity of reduced performance associated with age, familiarity with the healthcare setting, hearing and health status. Plan: One hundred and twenty inpatients from the four medical/surgical nursing units at the Portland VA Medical Center, 60 with normal hearing and 60 with hearing impairment will be recruited to participate in the study. Following assessment to ascertain eligibility and obtaining informed consent, patients will be tested in a sound booth housed at the National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research (NCRAR). Designed so that each patient serves as his or her own control, we can accommodate considerable baseline variability between patients without adversely affecting required sample size. Patients' performance in speech intelligibility and recall tests will be measured using a constant level of speech, in controlled environments of no noise (baseline), white noise, hospital noise and hospital noise with speech, all delivered via headphones in pseudo-random order. Performance will be measured in each type of noise at decibel levels equivalent to those currently experienced on nursing units and at lower levels that prior studies have shown are more conducive to effective communication By selecting measures that are particularly relevant to the safe care of hospitalized patients, and that have been studied extensively in healthy populations in highly controlled conditions, we expect to find compelling and unambiguous evidence that hospitalized patients correctly hear and recall very little of what is said to them during their hospitalizations. The majority of hospitalized patients stay on acute care nursing units during most or all of their hospitalizations, making this an appropriate population to study in the context of their responses to the noises typical in these environments. Perhaps most importantly, this study will heighten awareness of health-care personnel to the levels of impairment suffered by their patients - both in their ability to correctly interpret speech and to recall it - in the typical noisy environments of nursing units.

Many older subjects experience difficulty in understanding speech in noisy environments. Part of this problem is related to changes that occur in the ear with age and compromise the hearing of high-pitched sounds. Another part of the problem with speech understanding relates to changes with age in the neural circuits of the brain that process different speech sounds. Evidence suggests that these changes in neural circuits are particularly large if hearing loss is present. Thus, while hearing aids may help compensate for hearing deficits by amplifying speech sounds, additional treatment is necessary to restore optimal neural connections in the brain so that speech sounds can be accurately distinguished from each other. We are developing PC-based training programs in an attempt to restore optimal neural connections. The current randomized trial will evaluate whether two months of training to improve the ability to discriminate different consonant sounds in noise will also improve the understanding of continuous speech and enhance auditory memory and other high-level auditory functions.

Hearing Loss (HL) affects over 5% of the world's population (WHO 2014) and is the 5th leading cause of Years Lived with Disability. HL is currently managed with Hearing Aids (HAs), i.e. programmable sound amplification devices that are worn by the hearing impaired subjects to address their hearing difficulties. HA use however is often problematic, costly and with poor overall benefits. The holistic management of HL requires appropriate public health policies for HL prevention, early diagnosis, long-term treatment and rehabilitation; detection and prevention of cognitive decline; and socioeconomic inclusion of HL patients. Currently the evidential basis for forming such policies is limited. The EVOTION project proposes to address this by collecting and analysing a big set of heterogeneous data, including HA usage, audiological, physiological, cognitive, clinical and medication, personal, behavioural, life style, occupational and environmental data. This will be done by: i. accessing big datasets of existing HA user data from the EVOTION clinical partners (UCL/UCLH and GST in the UK; OTICON in Denmark) ii. collection of prospective HA user data who will be recruited to the prospective EVOTION study and who will undergo some additional assessments iii. collection of real time dynamic data of the human participant HA users who will be given a smart phone with different apps (auditory tests; auditory training), sensors (recording of heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate etc.) and smart HAs (recording environmental factors such as noise levels, type of noise etc.) so that real life contextual factors that affect HA usage and outcome can be identified. These data will be analysed with big data analysis/data mining techniques in order to identify relationships between these in order to use this information to derive and support public health decisions.

This is a phase 1 safety study performed in male or female adult participants with an established diagnosis of severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss that meets the criteria for cochlear implantation and the participant has already chosen to undergo cochlear implant surgery.

The MED-EL EAS Extended Follow-up Study is an extended follow-up of the subjects who were enrolled in the pivotal study to assess long-term safety and device performance.

Bilateral profound sensorineural hearing loss (PSNHL) is often treated with Cochlear Implants. The majority of bilaterally deafened patients, however, often only receive a unilateral cochlear implant (CI), with resultant limitations related to monaural listening. For unilateral CI users, the deficits inherently associated with monaural listening remain despite the considerable benefits achieved through implantation. Providing bilateral input to monaural listeners (MLs) overcomes some of these disadvantages. Treatment by contralateral routing of signal (CROS) hearing aids, where the signal of interest is routed from the impaired (deaf) ear to the normal cochlea for processing is a promising alternative in unilateral CI recipients who cannot benefit from bilateral CIs. Utilizing CROS technology provides a less invasive alternative for patients who are unable or unwilling to undergo a second CI surgery and offers an innovative approach to resolving the auditory deficits associated with monaural listening. CROS technology has been used to treat traditional monaural listeners since 1965. When applied to unilateral CI users, this novel approach can overcome a key limitation of current treatment by restoring access to sound from the non-implanted ear and improving speech perception in noise.

Bone anchored hearing aids provide a hearing solution for patients that are unable to wear traditional air conduction hearing aid solutions. The technology of the devices has developed significantly over the last 510 years and patients are gaining access to their sound processor at a much earlier stage than when first brought onto the market. Despite this the investigators feel there is still room to develop this and with the new abutments with specialised hydroxyapatite coating it is hoped that patients can be loaded with their sound processor in the day of surgery. This study will compare abutment stability between two groups of patients. Those loaded immediately with their sound processor and those loaded traditionally at 2 weeks post operatively. At routine followup appointments patients will have the stability of their abutment checked and the investigators will compare to see if loading earlier had any detrimental effects on osteointegration and the stability of the abutment. Based on the favourable outcomes and high stability record for the BA400 it is anticipated that the time to processor fitting may be further reduced, provided favourable bone conditions at the implant site and provided satisfactory soft tissue status at the time of loading. It is hypothesised that loading immediately at the time of surgery is possible with comparable short and long term outcomes when compared to standard loading at 2 weeks

This study aims to investigate the association between listening effort and cognitive function for both cognitively healthy individuals and for patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) in mid-to-late stages of life, and furthermore to investigate listening effort and cognitive function after several weeks of hearing aid use. Listening effort is measured by the recording of peak pupil dilation during a sentence-final word identification and recall (SWIR) test, cognitive performance is measured using a battery of pen and paper cognitive tests, and hearing loss is measured with pure tone audiometry (PTA). A select number of participants in both the cognitively healthy and MCI group will be administered hearing aids, and the study will re-test both listening effort and cognitive performance.

In this clinical trial, an un-controlled, repeated measures open design with within-subject comparison will be used to evaluate the effect of Naída Link M90 hearing aid and Naída CI M90 sound processor on sound perception. This design was shown to be successful in previous studies for the evaluation of sound coding strategies. Furthermore, a within-subject comparison decreases the variance in the results allowing for fewer subjects when the population that uses the investigational device is not large in general.