Clinical lector
Jesper Hvass Schmidt
Research Unit for ORL-Head and Neck Surgery and Audiology, Odense University Hospital and University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
| Project management | ||
| Project status | Open | |
| Data collection dates | ||
| Start | 01.04.2020 | |
| End | 01.03.2025 | |
User Operated Audiometry (UAud)
Short summary
The project will develop a user-operated hearing test including the Audible Contrast Threshold test (ACT) test to increase the access to hearing examinations and to improve the treatment of hearing loss with hearing aids. Patient benefits and satisfaction following hearing aid treatment based on the user-operated tests will be investigated in a clinical trial before implementation as a new efficient opportunity to diagnose and treat hearing loss.
Rationale
In Denmark the number of people with hearing loss is estimated to 800.000.
According to the DanishAssociation of the Hard of hearing and approximately 300.000 Danes own a hearing aid. Two-thirds of the people with hearing loss are above 65 years old. Between 2008 and 2018, the percentage of people in DK above age 65 increased from 15.6 to 19.3 (Eurostat, 2018). Consequently, the demand for hearingaids will increase in the future.
In the same period, the age of retirement increased meaning that there will be an increased number of persons with need of a hearing aid in the workforce. Accurate examination of hearing for clinical decisions is the bottleneck in the current clinical system. Presently, the examination is done purely by traditional manual pure-tone audiometry, which requires a technically skilled person to conduct the procedure.
According to Sundhedsdatastyrelsen (July 2019, http://mitsygehusvalg.dk) the current waiting time for the primary examination in the public system is between 4 and 120 weeks. It is necessary to examine all patients with at least one audiometry (primary examination to determine frequency-specific thresholds of hearing) to fit the hearing aid properly. Thus,there is a need for expanding the capacity or improving efficiency in order to reduce the waiting time. Since the number of persons with hearing disabilities is increasing this unmet need will increase in the future.
Description of the cohort
Adults with a hearing impairment eligible for hearing aid treatment referred to the hearing clinic at OUH.
Data and biological material
The data materiale will include:
- Hearing thresholds from the traditional and user-operated audiometry.
- Speech audiometry results from the traditional audiometry.
- ACT scores from the user-operated audiometry.
- Different quality indicators from the user-operated audiometry.
- Questionnaire data from SSQ, THI, IOI-HA and APHAP.
- A performance related outcome measure: HINT and two newly developed speech tests.
Collaborating researchers and departments
Department of Clinical Research, Faculty of Health Science, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
- Jesper Hvass Schmidt
- Carl Pedersen
OPEN, Open Patient Data Explorative Network, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark
- Jesper Hvass Schmidt
- Carl Pedersen
Research Unit for ORL-Head and Neck Surgery and Audiology, Odense University Hospital and University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
- Jesper Hvass Schmidt
- Carl Pedersen
Faculty of Engineering, The Maersk Mc-Kinney Møller Institute, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
- Ellen Raben Pedersen
- Chris Bang Sørensen
- Jacob Nielsen
- Christos Sidiras
Interacoustics Research Unit, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
- Søren Laugesen
- Raul Sanchez-Lopez
Hearing Systems Section, Department of Health Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
- Raul Sanchez-Lopez
Publications associated with the project