Estimated prevalence of cochlear dead regions in an audiological clinic population and the associated hearing aid success

Abstract

It is unknown how many patients in a typical caseload have audiometric findings associated with cochlear dead regions (Moore, 2004). The purpose of this study was to (1) examine a university clinic population and estimate the number of patients with suspected cochlear dead regions and (2) examine the hearing aid success for patients with this profile compared to patients without this profile. Results indicate a profile suggestive of cochlear dead regions in 11.4% of the patients. Mean word recognition scores (WRS) for patients with suspected cochlear dead regions were significantly poorer for patients with the dead-zone profile compared to patients without this profile, but with similar pure tone average. There was no significant difference between the number of post-fitting hearing aid visits to the clinic between groups and there was no significant difference in the number of returned hearing aids between these two groups.