Active clinical trials for "Hearing Loss"

The study aims to investigate if proactive parental educating and counselling can minimize loss to follow-ups of parents whose infant fail newborn hearing screening.

In this study, the investigators will study one of the basic biophysical properties of the auditory nerve, charge integration, behaviorally (detection threshold versus phase duration functions). The investigators will compare charge integration in two subject groups: congenitally deafened and deafened at a later age in life. The investigators will then examine if behaviorally estimated neural excitation patterns differ between short phase duration and long phase duration stimulation. Lastly, The investigators will measure if speech recognition improves with using long phase duration stimulation, relative to using the standard default short phase duration stimulation. The primary endpoint of the study is speech recognition, and the secondary endpoints are the steepness of the detection threshold versus phase duration functions, and the width of psychophysically estimated neural excitation.

The purpose of this investigation is to determine the safety and preliminary efficacy of implanting a cochlear implant (CI) in the profoundly deaf ear of an adult with one normal hearing (NH) ear (termed "single-sided deaf" person, or SSD). The potential subjects will have been deafened post-lingually, thus, at one point the now deafened ear did conduct sound from the periphery. The MED-EL CI system will be implanted in ten (10) SSD patients.The long-term goal of this research program is to determine whether the CI, in combination with the NH ear, may provide improved localization ability and better speech understanding in noise, relative to performance before cochlear implantation (i.e., with the NH ear alone). A secondary long-term goal is to determine whether CI stimulation may reduce tinnitus severity, compared to tinnitus experienced prior to cochlear implantation or when the CI is turned off, after implantation.

The world population has been growing and aging dramatically, with a rising prevalence of dementia. Worldwide, around 50 million people have dementia, with 10 million new cases added every year. Despite the epidemic scale of dementia, until now no cure or disease-modifying therapy has been identified. Therefore, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recognized dementia as a public health priority. Several large studies have demonstrated that hearing impairment is associated with a greater risk of cognitive impairment. Hearing rehabilitation could potentially provide a disease-modifying therapy to delay cognitive decline. Although auditory behavioral research has not yet revealed a reliable indicator of early cognitive impairment, cortical-evoked auditory potentials (CAEP) have shown promising evidence as a non-invasive way to identify early-stage cognitive impairment. The peripheral vestibular apparatus is located in the inner ear and codes rotation and translation of the head to preserve a stable view. Increasing evidence suggests that bilateral vestibular function loss, also known as bilateral vestibulopathy (BVP), leads to hippocampal atrophy and reduced spatial cognitive skills, as well as structural and functional alterations in parieto-insular and parieto-temporal regions. Many studies have demonstrated that vestibular function declines with age. Vestibular dysfunction can be linked to reduced topographical orientation and memory and has been suggested as a risk factor to AD, due to increased risk of falling and deficits in activities of daily life (ADL). Our first aim is to study the effect of SNHL and vestibular decline on CAEP, spatial and non-spatial cognitive functioning and trajectories in cognitively healthy older subjects, as well as patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD. Our second aim is to study if MRI brain volume changes can be observed in the hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, and auditory and vestibular key regions in these populations and correlate with CAEP and cognitive functioning. The expected outcome is important to society because it will provide data from a cognitive assessment protocol adapted for a potentially hearing-impaired population, objective outcome measures (incl. CAEP and MRI brain volume changes) to identify older subjects with SNHL and BVP at risk for cognitive decline, and will support screening and interventional studies to assess the impact of rehabilitation on slowing down cognitive decline.

Differences in speech-understanding and the quality of the subjective perception among cochlear implant patients (Digisonic SP) depends on numerous factors. The electrical field distribution (interaction between electrodes) could also explain the disparity of the performances? The objective of our study was to quantify the influence of the electrical field interactions between the channels of stimulation according to the vocal performances of the implanted subjects, for various subjective levels of electric stimulation.

To investigate the effect of sevoflurane and propofol on the concentrations of serum homocysteine and folic acid in children who received cochlear implant surgery.

Hearing aids are the number one treatment for hearing loss and it is estimated that out of the 2 million of UK individuals who are supplied with hearing aids 1.4 million will use their hearing aids to varying degrees and the other 0.6 million will stop using their hearing aids altogether. The proposed research is looking to improve hearing aid usage by using a self-affirmation intervention which lowers the threat of participants' ageing anxiety. The target of lowering participants' ageing anxiety to improve hearing aid use is because there is a stigma of hearing aids making people seem old and this stigma can make individuals resistant to wearing their hearing aids as they do not want to be seen in this light. The current proposed research is an extension of a pilot study that was conducted in 2016 which found that a self-affirmation intervention may be useful in improving individuals' hearing aid usage. They randomly allocated 50 first-time hearing aid users either to a group that undertook a self-affirming exercise (e.g., "If I feel threatened or anxious, then I will think about the things I value about myself") or to a no-intervention control group. Consistent with the idea that self-affirmation helps people deal with threat, first-time hearing aid users reported significantly lower anxieties about ageing after self-affirming. Moreover, according to the data usage downloaded from their hearing aids (data-logging), the self-affirming group were found to have worn their hearing aids an average of two hours per day longer than the control group. Due to the limited number of participants, the effects of the intervention were not statistically significant. Nevertheless, the low cost and high potential public health "reach" alongside the effect size of d = 0.43 indicates that the intervention shows promise. The main aim of this research is to re-test the self-affirmation intervention from the previous pilot study with a sufficiently large enough sample to answer the following "Does a self-affirmation intervention improve participant's hearing aid usage when compared to participants in the control group?

The majority of studies about bimodal hearing advantages have been conducted on adults but scant relevant studies into pediatric users, therefore more comparative studies are required to compare the effect of bimodal stimulation to unilateral cochlear implant use in children with severe to profound sensori-neural hearing loss .

Hearing impairment in older adults is becoming a common health problem as the population ages. The impact of hearing impairment in older adults includes not only physical function and cognitive performance, but also depression, loneliness and social isolation, as well as having a negative impact on quality of life and financial status. Therefore, an audiological rehabilitation program intervention is recommended. The purposes of this study are to examine the effects of an audiological rehabilitation program (Hear-Talk-Activity audiological rehabilitation program) intervention on communication abilities, depression, loneliness and quality of life outcomes in older adults with hearing impairment. The single-blind, randomized control trial will include older adults aged 65 years or older with hearing impairment and aid user. Participants will be randomized to either intervention groups or control groups.

This study aims to investigate the effect of Hericium Erinaceus on clinical patients with hearing impairment and possible mechanisms. Subjects with hearing impairment will be enrolled and randomly divided into experimental or control group supplemented with Hericium Erinaceus (430 mg/kg/day) or placebo, respectively for eight months. Basic characteristics will be evaluated at baseline by questionnaire. The hearing, liver and kidney functions, and neurotrophic factors will be examined at baseline, 4th month and 8th month.