Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2022 Jul 26;43(2):66-78.
doi: 10.1055/s-0042-1748874. eCollection 2022 May.

Applying the Hearing Aid Fitting Standard to Selection for Adults

Erin M Picou  1 , Richard A Roberts  1 , Gina Angley  1 , Todd A Ricketts  1
Affiliations
Review

Applying the Hearing Aid Fitting Standard to Selection for Adults

Erin M Picou et al. Semin Hear. .

Abstract

The recent hearing aid fitting standard for adults outlines the minimum practice for audiologists fitting adult patients with hearing loss. This article focuses on three items of the standard (5, 6, and 7), which focus on the selection of unilateral/bilateral hearing aids, hearing aid style, and coupling, in addition to feature selection. The standard emphasizes that decisions around these three aspects should be recommended for a patient in an individualized manner, based on their needs assessment. For these decisions, the needs assessment might include measures of speech-in-noise ability, social network size, patient preference, and a trial period. Additional elements could include assessments of manual dexterity, binaural interference, and attitude toward hearing aids. However, there are a multitude of ways to practice clinically and still meet the items outlined in the standard. As long as the selection decisions consider individualized patient factors and are capable of meeting validated prescriptive targets, a clinician would be meeting the adult hearing aid fitting minimum standard guidance. In addition, despite the large number of past studies supporting these standards, additional, high-quality research including randomized, controlled, clinical trials are still needed to further support appropriate minimum standard recommendations.

Keywords: adults; hearing aid fitting; hearing loss; standard.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

CONFLICT OF INTEREST None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Audiograms for example cases related to decision to fit bilateral hearing aids (standard item no. 5). Circles and red color indicate right ear; x's and blue color indicate left ear.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Audiograms for example cases related to style and coupling selections (standard item no. 5). Circles and red color indicate right ear; x's and blue color indicate left ear.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Audiograms for example cases related to decision to hearing aid feature and signal processing selection (standard item no. 7). Circles and red color indicate right ear; x's and blue color indicate left ear.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Ricketts T A, Bentler R, Mueller G H. 2017. Essentials of Modern Hearing Aids: Selection, Fitting, and Verification. San Diego: Plural;
    1. Dillon H.Hearing Aids2nd ed.New York:Thieme;2012
    1. Boymans M, Goverts S T, Kramer S E, Festen J M, Dreschler W A. A prospective multi-centre study of the benefits of bilateral hearing aids. Ear Hear. 2008;29(06):930–941. - PubMed
    1. Freyaldenhoven M C, Plyler P N, Thelin J W, Burchfield S B. Acceptance of noise with monaural and binaural amplification. J Am Acad Audiol. 2006;17(09):659–666. - PubMed
    1. Hawkins D B, Yacullo W S. Signal-to-noise ratio advantage of binaural hearing aids and directional microphones under different levels of reverberation. J Speech Hear Disord. 1984;49(03):278–286. - PubMed