Verification of Hearing Aid Fitting using Aided Auditory Steady-State Response In Children

Abstract

In this study total number of 20 children (40 ears) was selected with severe to profound hearing loss with their age ranged from 4 to 10 years with good mentality and regular users of hearing aid for at least three months. All children was tested using a double wall sound treated room model Amplisilence E,two-channel Audiometer GSI model 61 calibrated according to ANSI S.3.6, 1996 and connected to headphones TDH 39, bone vibrator B71 and two loudspeakers for sound field testing, acoustic Immittancemeter Madsen GSI TYMPSTAR model and auditory Steady-State Response evoked potential system model GSI AUDERA. Results showed that behavioral thresholds were significantly better than ASSR thresholds at all frequencies tested. Statistical significant correlation between PTA & ASSR at all frequencies. The difference between ASSR thresholds and behavioral threshold in general might be attributed to the effect of background noise and harmonic overtones of the response that could not be calculated, and there is significant correlation between the aided behavioral threshold and aided ASSR. It was concluded that Aided sound field ASSR and aided behavioral threshold showed strongly correlated results and this indicates that ASSR may be a good alternative method for the measurement of aided hearing level in infants and children. Throughout this study it is recommended that Aided ASSR can be used in difficult to test children as an objective measure to assess the benefit from the hearing aid.