J Am Acad Audiol
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The major consequence of sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) is communicative difficulty, especially with the addition of noise and/or reverberation. The purpose of this investigation was to compare two types of technologies that have been shown to improve the speech-perception performance of individuals with SNHL: directional microphones and frequency modulation (FM) systems. Forty-six adult subjects with slight to severe SNHL served as subjects. ⋯ Additionally, speech perception was significantly better with the use of two hearing aids used in conjunction with two FM receivers rather than with just one FM receiver. Directional microphone performance was significantly better than omnidirectional microphone performance. All aided listening conditions were significantly better than the unaided listening condition.
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Glutathione ester but not glutathione protects against cisplatin-induced ototoxicity in a rat model.
Glutathione (GSH) provides an important antioxidant and detoxification pathway. We tested to determine if direct administration of GSH or GSH ester could reduce cisplatin- (CDDP) induced ototoxicity. We tested eight groups of five rats each: a control group, a group receiving 16 mg/kg ip CDDP infused over 30 minutes, and six groups receiving either GSH or GSH ester at 500, 1000, or 1500 mg/kg intraperitoneally 30 minutes prior to 16 mg/kg CDDP. ⋯ The 500 mg/kg GSH ester reduced hearing loss and OHC loss, but protection decreased as dosage increased, suggesting possible toxicity. GSH was not significantly protective. The best GSH ester protection was less than we have previously reported with D-methionine.
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Hearing-impaired listeners with similar hearing losses may differ widely in their ability to understand speech in noise. Such individual susceptibility to noise may explain why patients obtain varying degrees of benefit from hearing aids. The chief purpose of this study was to determine if adaptive measures of unaided speech recognition in noise were related to hearing aid benefit. ⋯ Three months later, subjects completed a hearing aid benefit questionnaire. A weak relationship was observed between perceived hearing handicap and hearing aid benefit. There were no significant relationships between speech-in-noise measures and hearing aid benefit, suggesting that speech recognition ability in noise is not a major determinant of the benefit derived from amplification.
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More than 6000 children born annually in this country have hearing loss resulting from congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection, the leading nonhereditary congenital cause of hearing loss in children. This exemplary congenital symptomatic CMV case focuses on the results of longitudinal audiologic, educational, medical, psychological, and visual evaluations and intervention. Decreased ocular motor control and visual acuity were observed as was bilateral deterioration of hearing from 3 days though 9 years of age. Treatment with dexamethasone and histamine resulted in almost complete reversal of the most recent progression of hearing loss in the left ear.
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Comparative Study
Speech recognition in noise by hearing-impaired and noise-masked normal-hearing listeners.
A prevailing complaint among individuals with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) is difficulty understanding speech, particularly under adverse listening conditions. The present investigation compared the speech-recognition abilities of listeners with mild to moderate degrees of SNHL to normal-hearing individuals with simulated hearing impairments, accomplished using spectrally shaped masking noise. ⋯ Results revealed significant differences between groups in sentential-recognition ability, with the hearing-impaired subjects performing poorer than the masked-normal listeners. These findings suggest the presence of a secondary distortion degrading sentential-recognition ability in the hearing impaired, implications of these data will be discussed concerning the mechanism(s) responsible for speech perception in the hearing impaired.