Active clinical trials for "Deafness"

Previous research has proposed employing telehealth in hearing healthcare to improve clinical care and increase access to hearing services. Several studies have shown that hearing support can be carried out without in-person meetings and lead to significant benefits for hearing aid users. Interventions for persons with hearing impairment improve communication and improve outcomes more than hearing aid use alone. The first purpose of this study is needs-oriented and the second purpose is research-oriented. The needs-oriented purpose of this project is to, via a national website of health information and services for Sweden, provide needed online support to hearing aid users. The research-oriented purpose of this project is to document the effectiveness of the online support compared to traditional support that the Hearing Organization, provides ("standard care").

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.

This clinical investigation aims to collect data on the use of the Mi2000 system, a totally implantable cochlear implant system, for the first time in human subjects.

The aging of the population, and greater exposure to noise, are responsible for an increased incidence of hearing loss (presbycusis). This hearing loss is sensorineural disability that has become a real public health problem. The main means of rehabilitation of this disability is represented by the apparatus of patients with conventional hearing aids. However, these hearing aids have several drawbacks that limit their profits, often abandoning the prosthesis by the patient. Middle ear implants were developed to answer these problems. They are intended to amplify the sound signal by transmitting directly to the middle ear to compensate for the hearing loss and are indicated in case of failure or contraindication of conventional equipment. However, these middle ear implants currently have limitations as performance failure. Recent data show that the performance of the ossicles repair techniques are dependent on the coupling of the ossicular prosthesis to the ossicles. Furthermore, advances in the understanding of the biomechanics of the ossicles confirm the importance of the placement and linkage of surgical restoration processes. This data can be applied to middle ear implants to improve performance. Indeed, a preliminary experimental study on anatomical parts, using analysis of the vibration of the middle ear structures by laser velocimetry, allowed the investigators to define the transducer placement method and coupling method to ossicles. Investigators wish to validate in vivo results in a pilot study on a small number of patients by comparing two surgical techniques guided by velocimetric measures.

23 candidates for BiCROS hearing aids will be recruited and fitted with a hearing aid and a CROS device. Following a real-world trial, each participant will be tested on a range of outcome measures including speech recognition in noise, ratings of listening effort, and ratings of preference.

Mild to moderate hearing loss remains undertreated, largely because of the high cost of hearing aids. A promising and much less expensive alternative is the use of personal sound amplification products (PSAPs), which are electronic, portable, over-the-counter devices that amplify sound. Studies have shown that the use of PSAPs provides significant hearing benefits and improves the quality of life for older adults with mild to moderate hearing loss. However, there is insufficient data to determine the impact of PSAPs use on speech processing in the brain. The purpose of this study is to use electroencephalography (EEG) measurements to assess the neurobiological and behavioral effects of PSAPs on speech perception in noise in individuals with mild to moderate hearing loss. The investigators expect that the PSAPs use will result in an immediate improvement in the ability to perceive speech-in-noise, supporting that these hearing devices may be a means of restoring communication skills in people with mild to moderate hearing loss. Behavioral benefits will be associated with increased brain activity in auditory regions and connectivity between auditory and speech regions in the brain.

The aim of this study is to evaluate cerebral asymmetry for face processing in a group of profoundly deaf participants and a group of hearing controls by the mean of fMRI measure. To this end, we present chimeric faces (faces split into different halves), entire faces, or faces presented in divided visual field, and subjects perform a gender categorization task while lying in a fMRI scanner. It is expected to find a reduced cerebral asymmetry in the Fusiform Face Area in deaf in comparison with hearing participants.

This study aims at investigating new automatic fitting techniques for cochlear implant patients based on objective measures. For this reason, the evolution of these neurophysiological measures, expressing the encoding of pure tones and speech, will be characterized in cochlear implanted patients as a function of post-implantation time and will be compared to those of normal hearing subjects. Moreover, the effect of auditory training with new tools based on serious games will be assessed.