2013 — 2017 |
Bentler, Ruth A Tremblay, Kelly [⬀] |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Linking Snr to Hearing Aid Success @ University of Washington
DESCRIPTION: Hearing loss, and the resulting consequences of it, is an important problem that affects all humans. No person is exempt from the process of aging or the eventual impact it has on the ear-brain system. This point is noteworthy because the portion of the population aged 65 years and older is increasing at a faster rate than the total population. Twenty percent of the population is predicted to be 65 years or older by 2030 and between 35% and 50% will likely report having presbycusis, a sensory impairment that is treated primarily through the use of hearing aids (HA). A major problem, however, is that HA use among people with hearing loss is not prevalent (approximately 25%) and only half of those users report being satisfied with their aided performance in noise. Despite careful efforts to verify that hearing aids (HA) are fitted appropriately in the clinic, there is little evidence to support that current practices result in successful outcomes. Our hypothesis is that successful HA use depends, in part, on the signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio being delivered to a person's auditory system by their HA as well as a person's own ability to neurally encode speech in noise. Our overall project goal is to identify patient- and device-centered variables that contribute to HA success so that related outcome measures can be developed and applied in clinical settings. Two expected predictors of real-world HA success are the individual's threshold for speech in noise (SNR-50) as well as the SNR at the output of the HA.
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0.976 |
2018 — 2021 |
Bentler, Ruth A |
P50Activity Code Description: To support any part of the full range of research and development from very basic to clinical; may involve ancillary supportive activities such as protracted patient care necessary to the primary research or R&D effort. The spectrum of activities comprises a multidisciplinary attack on a specific disease entity or biomedical problem area. These grants differ from program project grants in that they are usually developed in response to an announcement of the programmatic needs of an Institute or Division and subsequently receive continuous attention from its staff. Centers may also serve as regional or national resources for special research purposes. |
Iowa Cochlear Implant Clinical Research Center Vii
Program Director/Principal Investigator (Last, First, Middle): Gantz, Bruce J. PROJECT SUMMARY ? PROJECT 1 The past 35 years of cochlear implant (CI) research have focused on outcomes primarily related to speech perception. Candidacy recently has extended into the less severely impaired population due to newer, shorter implants, including hybrid (acoustic-plus-electric) designs. The potential for improvement/change in domains other than speech perception can inform both policy and rehabilitative decision-making. Human ecology describes the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments. This concept considers that human behaviors must be studied from both the social and natural science vantage points. In hearing health care, success with intervention is as much related to the anatomy/physiology of the individual as it is to the environmental and personal (i.e., ecological) factors that make each individual unique from the next. The overall goal of this project is to determine the impact of intervention on user's hearing-related functions and disability in their natural environments (i.e., real-world outcomes) and to clarify what ecological factors, as well as perceptual factors, affect these real-world outcomes. To date most cochlear implant (CI) research has focused on determining the effect of anatomical and physiological factors on laboratory outcomes, such as speech perception. We recognize, however, that the real-world outcomes exhibit great heterogeneity, which is likely due, in part, to the broader range of environmental and personal contextual (i.e., ecological) underpinnings in the hearing impaired population. As has been the case with hearing aids (HA), much variance can be accounted for by examining individual ecological factors. Very little is understood about (1) the characteristics of ecological factors of the CI population, (2) the influence that ecological factors have on the heterogeneity of real-world outcomes of this population, and (3) how this influences changes over time. With the expanded indications for CI quantifying the ecological factors that parlay into real-world outcomes in CI is critical because real-world outcomes ultimately determine societal burden and policy. Furthermore, because traditional retrospective self-reported outcome measures are often subject to recall bias, we will, in addition to standardized questionnaires and a data-logging feature on the processors, use a smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA) system to capture users' real-time experiences in situ (i.e., in natural environment). This will allow for measurement of the characteristics of listening environments in addition to subjective assessment of listening difficulty/ease. Two Aims have been designed to study the influence of ecological factors have on outcomes of listeners with a CI. Aim 1. To characterize environmental factors that are relevant to listening and communication for participants in each intervention group (Aim 1A) and to determine the effect of intervention on these factors (Aim 1B). Aim 2. To document the effect of intervention on real-world outcomes (Aim 2A) and determine to what extent environmental, personal, and perceptual factors moderate those outcomes (Aim 2B) over time (Aim 2C).
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1 |