Active clinical trials for "Deafness"

Current treatment options for bilateral profoundly deaf children, diagnosed with inner ear anatomical abnormalities, are limited and, in the case of absent cochleas, non-existent. An auditory brainstem implant (ABI) places an electrode close to the auditory nucleus in the brainstem. Children aged 2 - 5 who are not candidates for a cochlear implant, or who did not demonstrate benefit from a cochlear implant, will be implanted with an ABI and followed for 1 year for safety and a total of 3 years for preliminary efficacy. This is a feasibility study to determine the safety of the ABI.

In search of the best possible outcome for the severe hearing impaired who have regained the ability to hear by means of a cochlear implant (CI), electrical stimulation and the information it carries should match as closely as possible to what the human brain naturally has evolved to cope with and learned to process instead of relying on plasticity to adapt to an induced mismatch. At the moment, however, CI's are fitted with a 'one size fits all' principle. This is known to cause a mismatch between the frequencies presented by the CI electrode array and the frequencies represented at the corresponding natural acoustic location in an individual cochlea. In this study it is hypothesized that an individual imaged based fitting that pursues natural hearing alignment and is implemented from the start of the rehabilitation process, will improve the individual outcomes of electric hearing. The natural fitting strategy is thought to give rise to a steeper learning curve, result in a better performance in challenging listening situations, improve sound quality, complement better with residual acoustic hearing in the contralateral ear and win the preference of CI-recipients.

Phase I clinical study on the safety, tolerance, efficacy and pharmacokinetics of repeated intratympanic HY01 in patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss. In this study, low-dose group and high-dose group were designed, 6 cases in each group.

This study is designed to check the effect of the use of the ear popper device on serous otitis media in children and on the conductive hearing loss accompanying the otitis. It is intended that 30 children aged 3-18 years will participate in the study. The inclusion criteria are : clinical serous otitis media for a duration of more then 3 months, a conductive hearing loss of at least 15 decibels air bone gap and tympanometry type B or C. The children will use the ear popper for 7 weeks. They will undergo otologic examination, audiometry and tympanometry at the beginning ao the trial, at 7 weeks and at 3 months from the beginning of the trial. The otologic findings and the audiometry and tympanometry results before and after the trial will be compared. We will try to determine whether the use of the ear popper in the test group will improve the conductive hearing loss and prevent the need for tympanostomy tube insertion.

This study investigate weather one type of cochlear implant (CI) surgery (insertion of the electrode via paracentesis of the round window (RWA)) leads to less vertigo than another type of CI surgery (cochleostomy). The participants will be randomized into 2 groups: RWA or cochleostomy. They will be examined with a video head impulse test (vHIT) before and after CI surgery to clarify their vestibular function.

The incidence of sudden hearing loss is rising obviously resent year, Glucocorticoids have obtained obvious effect in the treatment of sudden deafness. Postauricular hypodermic injection is the latest findings in clinical work and a new noninvasive way of administration which is gradually expanding research. The aim of this experiment is to verify and explore the efficacy and safety of the postauricular injection treatment with different doses of Glucocorticoids.

To evaluate the combination of electric hearing through Cochlear Implant and acoustic hearing through hearing aid in bimodal users with moderate-to-severe hearing loss in the non-implanted ear. The research will also provide pilot study data on unilateral Cochlear Implant recipients with residual useful acoustic hearing in the implanted ear whose acoustic hearing has been preserved.

The purpose of this project is to validate a quick, easy-to-use and administer smartphone hearing-in-noise test. The Hearing-in-Noise Test (HINT) measures an individual's ability to hear speech in quiet and in noise. HINTs are traditionally done testing both ears together as binaural hearing ability is key in noisy settings and everyday, functional hearing. The app (called HearMe) can potentially be used to easily and quickly collect hearing-in-noise and speech-in-noise measurements. The smartphone app developed is a hearing-in-noise test that presents the subject with a series of stimuli consisting of a spoken three-digit sequence presented at a varying hearing-to-noise ratio. For each stimulus presentation, the user tap the three-digit sequence. The duration of the app is less than 3 minutes. For this project the investigators will test at least 50 subjects with hearing loss and 50 control subjects between the ages of 18-80. The subjects will be invited to take the app. The approach for this pilot study is to characterize hearing-in-noise thresholds (also referred to as a speech-reception threshold) as measured by the app in both subject groups, and relate it to the phenotype of each group as a preliminary evaluation of the app as well as a preliminary validation against their routinely collected measurements of hearing function (pure-tone audiometry thresholds). The study will assess the validity of the test construct in measuring hearing-in-noise thresholds, and serve as a foundation for further iterative designs of the app and future validation and characterization studies. This study seeks to validate a developed smartphone HINT on an initial cohort of patients and controls. It is anticipated that patients with hearing loss will display higher signal-to-noise ratio thresholds (as measured by the iPhone app) compared to controls.

Idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSNHL) is a complicated hearing impairment with unclear etiology and unsatisfying treatment effects. Vestibular dysfunction like vertigo has been considered as a risk factor of profound hearing loss and poor prognosis in ISSNHL. Glucocorticoids, administered through oral or intratympanic way, is currently a regular and standard treatment for ISSNHL based on hearing outcome. However, little investigations have been conducted on recovery process and treatment effects of glucocorticoids on vestibular dysfunctions of ISSNHL. This study aims to evaluate the recovery pattern and possible process of vestibular system in ISSNHL with vestibular dysfunction, and to compare the efficacy of oral or intratympanic glucocorticoids in these participants. A randomized, outcome assessor- and statistical analyst-blinded, controlled, clinical trial will be carried out. 72 patients complaining of vestibular dysfunction appearing as vertigo, dizziness, imbalance or lateropulsion with ISSNHL will be recruited and randomized into two arms of oral or intratympanic glucocorticoids therapy in 1:1 allocation. The primary outcomes will be subjective feelings evaluated by duration of vestibular dysfunction symptoms, dizziness-related handicap, visual analogue scale for vertigo, and objective vestibular function tests results assessed by sensory organization test, caloric test, video head impulse test and vestibular evoked myogenic potentials. Assessment will be performed at baseline and at 1, 2, 4, and 8 weeks post-randomization.

The main purpose of this study is to monitor the response from the cochlea as the electrode is inserted during the operation to receive a cochlear implant. The Cochlear Response Telemetry tool aims to measure the response from the cells within the cochlea and may be useful in the future to help to improve the surgical technique and potentially help surgeons better preserve any natural hearing that is available. The measurements are obtained using the cochlear implant and sound processor while a sound is presented to the ear through an earphone (like an earplug) placed into the ear canal.