title: Clinical evaluation of a portable digital hearing aid with narrow-band loudness compensation.
abstract: A new portable digital hearing aid referred to as CLAIDHA (Compensate for Loudness by Analyzing Input-signal Digital Hearing Aid), which employs frequency-dependent amplitude compression based on narrow-band loudness compensation, was clinically evaluated in 159 subjects with hearing loss. The results of speech tests revealed better intelligibility compared with the subject's own hearing aids; the advantage of using CLAIDHA in daily life was also indicated by the results of a questionnaire completed by the subjects. In about 64% of the subjects with a flat, gradually sloping type of hearing loss, CLAIDHA was satisfactorily adopted for daily use. However, in the subjects with a steeply sloping type of hearing loss and subjects with losses mainly at high and low frequencies, with near-normal mid-frequency hearing. this loudness compensation scheme seems to be slightly less effective.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Tohoku University School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan. hi00@cc.tohoku.ac.jp
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hidaka
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kawase
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Takahashi
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Suzuki
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ozawa
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sakamoto
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Sasaki
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hirano
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ueda
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sone
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Takasaka
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006310:Hearing Aids; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D006801:Humans; D008144:Loudness Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D017755:Prosthesis Fitting; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires