Predicting Hearing aid Benefit Using Speech-Evoked Envelope Following Responses in Children With Hearing Loss.
Vijayalakshmi Easwar, David Purcell, Trevor Wright
PMID 36946195WHAT IT FOUND
Hearing aids improved audibility and speech discrimination in 18 children with hearing loss.
More detected speech-evoked brain responses were linked to better aided discrimination, but this small pilot does not prove the test replaces behavioral assessment.
Key findings
01With hearing aids, speech sounds were more audible and speech-evoked EFR amplitude improved.
02When a sound was audible, an EFR was detected in 82.1% of aided instances and 66.5% of unaided instances.
03The average number of detected EFRs was 4.9 aided and 2.5 unaided, and this increase was associated with improved speech discrimination (correlation = 0.73).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was a pilot with 18 children, and the authors did not calculate a sample size beforehand. Children were 6.2 to 17 years old, so it does not show how the method would work in infants or very young children, who are the main group needing early hearing aid benefit checks. EFRs were not perfect: sensitivity was 82.1% in aided conditions and 66.5% in unaided conditions. Some children had poorer audibility or smaller EFR amplitudes with hearing aids than without them, especially at low frequencies. The hearing aids were tested with noise reduction and other features turned off, so results may not match everyday hearing aid use. The group included unilateral and bilateral hearing loss and one child with mixed hearing loss, so it was not a single homogeneous group.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest. The work was supported by the Hearing Health Foundation through an Emerging Research Grant awarded to Easwar.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as proof that speech-evoked EFRs can replace behavioral hearing aid checks in young children. The study was a small pilot in children aged 6.2 to 17 years, sensitivity was 82.1% aided and 66.5% unaided, and some aided EFR amplitudes were smaller than unaided amplitudes.