Effectiveness in prosthetic adaptation and users’ satisfaction: comparison between different technologies

The effectiveness of a hearing aid (HA) is commonly assessed by a questionnaire that provide information on the benefits/disadvantages of the use of the HA in real life situations. This work wants to analyze if acoustic benefit and satisfaction levels depend by an HA equipped with different technologies (Basic technology HA, Medium technology HA, Premium technology HA trough the International Outcome Inventory for Hearing Aids (IOI-HA) questionnaire administered to 60 patients and the Hearing Handicap Inventory (HHI) questionnaire administered to 14 patients. The results show that regardless of technology, persistent problems remain such as perception in noisy environments. A further effort is required by the technicians in the evaluation of the patient as a whole, from the identification of the HA that ergonomically better suits the needs of each patient until the adaptation in complex environments, for the minimization of the perception of disability.