P20Session 2 (Friday 13 January 2023, 09:00-11:00)Age-dependent speech recognition in noise for children with mild to severe hearing loss with hearing aids or cochlear implants 6 to 18 years of age
Objectives: Speech reception in noise is an important outcome measure of the rehabilitation of children with hearing loss using hearing aid(s) (HAs) and/or cochlear implant(s) (CIs). The Dutch digit-in-noise (DIN) test is a validated test to reliably evaluate the speech reception in noise at a young age. For normal hearing children the result of the DIN-test improves with increasing age. Using the DIN-test results of our clinical population, we investigated whether speech recognition also improves with increasing age for these children with hearing loss. In addition, we determined factors that influence speech recognition in noise of children rehabilitated with HAs and/or CIs.
Design: We retrospectively analysed the DIN-test results of Dutch speaking children with hearing loss who are rehabilitated with HAs (N=161) and/or CIs (N=81). The DIN-test is part of the clinical yearly follow up of children with hearing loss in our tertiary referral center. The DIN-test results of children between 6 and 18 with an open-set phoneme recognition in quiet > 50% at 65dB SPL and stable hearing loss were included. 56 HA-users and 56 CI-users have performed the DIN test more than once, resulting in 233 measurements for HA-users and 170 for CI-users. The children were tested with their own devices on their daily programs. All were experienced users with at least 1 year of experience. The effects were modeled with a linear mixed models with random intercepts for children with HAs and CIs separately.
Results and conclusion: We found a significant effect of age on the DIN-test for children with HA and CI. For HA users, the speech reception threshold (SRT) for soft speech and degree of hearing loss (normal, mild, moderate or servere) are also significant predictors for the DIN-test result. For children with CIs a clinically relevant and significant difference in DIN-test result between children with bilateral versus monaural rehabilitation exist. Hence, like normal hearing children, the speech recognition in noise improves with increasing age for their counterparts with hearing loss rehabilitated with HAs and/or CIs.