Evaluation of the I-PLAN Intervention to Promote Hearing Aid Use in New Adult Users: a Randomized Controlled Trial.

There was no standard care group. Everyone received the information card plus usual NHS care, so the trial cannot say whether any group did better than ordinary fitting alone. Follow-up was only 6 weeks, and the authors note that habits may take longer than that to form. Nobody checked whether participants actually carried out the plans they wrote, or how they used their hearing aid box as a reminder. Hearing aid use, self-regulation and habit were all measured at the same point, so it cannot be shown that a change in self-regulation or habit came before the change in use. Everyone was a first-time hearing aid user with mild to moderate self-reported handicap at a single audiology department in the north of England, so the results may not transfer to experienced users or to other services. 29 of 240 participants (12.1%) missed the 6-week follow-up appointment. The plan effect was small to medium, and the authors say whether it represents a clinically significant change is unclear.

The study was funded by the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, International Islamic University Malaysia, the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre and the NIHR Greater Manchester Patient Safety Translational Research Centre. No individual author conflicts of interest were declared in the text supplied.

Do not conclude that reminders make hearing aid use worse. The prompt tested here was one specific object, the hearing aid box, and the authors themselves suggest it may have been read as a reminder of ageing; other kinds of prompt were not tested. Do not read the plan result as a proven treatment either: the effect was small to medium, the paper says whether it is clinically significant is unclear, and there was no standard care group to compare against.