Discussion
hearing aid gain
AIDS
In this randomized clinical effectiveness trial, the self-fitting group performed comparably with the audiologist-fitted group. At 2 weeks, the self-fitting group had a small but meaningful advantage on 2 of the 4 outcome measures. After support and fine-tuning were provided to the self-fitting (remote support) and audiologist-fitted groups, no clinically meaningful differences were evident in any outcome measures at the end of the 6-week trial.Audiologists fitted participants with hearing aids by matching the hearing aid gain according to prescriptive targets based on the audiometric results. Counseling and hearing aid orientation was provided in person at the fitting stage (T0), and hearing aids were fine-tuned based on the patient report at the 2-week (T1) follow-up appointment. We considered this characteristic of clinical best practice, aligned with the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association guidelines.We found better self-reported outcomes for the self-fitting compared with the audiologist-fitted groups after 2 weeks of field use that was clinically meaningful. Specifically, the APHAB self-reported background noise performance was better for the self-fitting group, as was the global benefit score. The self-fitting group also showed a longer duration of daily hearing aid use on the IOI-HA, along with the total score. However, after 6 weeks of hearing aid use, the self-reported outcomes were not meaningfully different between the groups. Three previous effectiveness trialsThere is a prevailing assumption that hearing aids matched to prescriptive targets through probe tube verification result in better speech recognition in noise.