A Measure of Long-Term Hearing Aid Use Persistence Based on Battery Reordering Data.
Oliver Zobay, Lauren K Dillard, Graham Naylor and 1 others
PMID 33795614WHAT IT FOUND
Battery reorder records can estimate whether hearing aid use continued long term, but not how much daily use occurred.
They aligned with appointment patterns, early reported use, age and hearing loss, yet depend on assumptions and miss some users.
Key findings
01The persistence measure classified a patient as persistent at 2 years if at least one battery order occurred in the previous 18 months.
02The measure aligned with hearing-aid appointment patterns and reported use: persistent users reported greater daily use early after fitting, and persistence increased with hearing loss up to around 80 dB HL and was highest for ages 70 to 80 years.
03Battery-order data can misclassify users: 39% of those classified nonpersistent at 2 years ordered batteries later, and outside-VHA battery purchases would underestimate persistence.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The measure is binary and does not show how much hearing aid use occurred each day. It cannot describe changes in hearing aid use during the initial 18 months after fitting in this dataset. Some patients classified as nonpersistent at 2 years ordered batteries later, so the label can change. Patients who buy batteries outside the Veterans Health Administration would be counted as less persistent than they are. Fewer than 0.2% of patients had cochlear implant procedure codes, so that source of underestimation was considered minor. Rechargeable hearing aids may make battery-order records less useful over time.
Declared interests
No author conflict-of-interest statement is included in the supplied text. The article metadata lists U.S. government and non-U.S. government research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat battery-order records as proof of daily hearing aid use. The measure only says whether a refill occurred within an 18-month window, and 39% of users classified as nonpersistent at 2 years ordered batteries later.