Hearing screening using the uHear™ smartphone-based app: reproducibility of results from two response modes.
Marta Luiza Santana da Cunha, Márcia da Silva Lopes, Tatiane Costa Meira and 1 others
PMID 37098938WHAT IT FOUND
In 65 adults, uHear hearing thresholds agreed well between self-touched and researcher-recorded modes, especially above 40 dBHL.
The two modes took similar time, but agreement was poor near normal thresholds.
Key findings
01Among 65 adults, the self-response and test-operator modes produced hearing thresholds that differed by 5 dBHL or less in more than 75% of comparisons.
02The reported agreement values were 0.826 to 0.927, but reproducibility was poor at 25 dBHL across all tested frequencies.
03Mean screening time was 5.63 min in self-response and 5.55 min in test-operator mode, with no significant difference (p=0.65).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample came from a hearing assessment clinic with many people who already had hearing loss, so the study could not fully test agreement at weak tones. Only the right ear was analysed, chosen by lot, so the results do not show how the two modes compare in both ears. The two modes were done one after the other, and the authors mention that learning or first exposure to pure-tone testing may have affected thresholds. Some participants may have been unfamiliar with touchscreen technology, which could affect the self-response mode. In the test-operator mode, the researcher had to wait for a hand raise and then touch the screen, and the authors mention this delay may have affected recording. The study tested reproducibility between two ways of using the same app; it did not compare the app with conventional pure-tone audiometry in this paper.
Declared interests
The work was funded by CNPq, the Federal University of Bahia, and FAPESB. The supplied text does not report commercial funding or author conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that the test-operator mode gives accurate hearing thresholds for all levels of hearing loss. This study compared two ways of recording responses within the same app, not against conventional audiometry, and reproducibility was poor at 25 dBHL and at low outputs near 40 dBHL.