Hi, I’m Dr. Egan from Now Hear This®, and today I’m going to talk to you about the importance of measuring hearing aid outcomes.
At our clinic, when someone has hearing loss and hearing aids are the right solution for them, they go through the hearing aid fitting process. Their hearing aids are programmed using something called Real Ear Measurement. They are then seen several times afterward to ensure that everything sounds good, the hearing aids fit well on their ears, and any necessary adjustments are made to help their brain adapt to the sounds they were missing.
At that point, we go through our patient’s listening goals. We revisit the original challenges they mentioned when they first came to our clinic. After that, we conduct outcome measurements using a survey. One of the surveys we use is called the Hearing Handicap Inventory for Adults, which provides a percentage score indicating how much of a hearing loss handicap someone perceives.
- A score of 0-16% means there is little to no perceived hearing loss handicap.
- A score of 18-42% indicates a mild to moderate handicap due to hearing loss.
- A score of 44% or more suggests a significant perceived hearing loss handicap, meaning the person is struggling with hearing in their day-to-day life.
If you think about it, the goal of hearing aids and proper hearing intervention is to reduce this percentage as much as possible so that patients experience as little hearing difficulty as possible.
I’m excited to share that in our most recent 20 patients who completed the Hearing Handicap Inventory for Adults, we recorded an average post-treatment score of 3.5%—which essentially means no perceived hearing loss handicap after intervention.
This is fantastic because my passion and goal every day is to help patients hear their best. Conducting these surveys holds me accountable, ensuring that I’m doing everything I can to improve my patients’ hearing. It’s always rewarding to see that they feel they are truly being helped.
A score of 3.5% means that 97% of the time, patients are not experiencing difficulty hearing—which is exactly what we strive for with all of our patients.
I hope you learned something from this video today, and of course, have a wonderful rest of your day!
