How much do CI users feel annoyed by noise in everyday life?

Introduction

With a focus on speech understanding and sound quality, hearing with cochlear implants (CI) has steadily improved over time. Using psychometric and objective measurements as well as subjective expressions of the CI user on the sound quality, the CI systems are set in the clinical routine and the hearing performance is evaluated by means of various speech intelligibility tests. However, hearing in acoustically complex everyday situations can only be assessed to a limited extent. The aim of this study is to use a survey to record how high the degree of annoyance caused by various noise / noise types in CI users in everyday life.

Material and method

A questionnaire is designed to answer 14 questions about everyday noise disturbance from different sounds / types of noise from experienced CI users (as well as a comparison group of 30 normal hearing people (NH)). On a 5-Likert scale, the degree of disturbance is evaluated for different sounds (e.g., at home, on the road, outdoors, etc.). The CI users use a digital pen to fill in the questionnaires, which records the results via a built-in camera and enables a direct evaluation.

Results and Conclusion

Results from 30 NH and about 100 CI users are presented. The results could help to investigate which noise / types of noise in the everyday life of CI users in comparison to NH are perceived as particularly disturbing. From the results, solutions for clinical CI adaptation may be derived. The results can also provide helpful hints for the technical development of CI systems.

MEDEL GmbH Deutschland

Publication History

Article published online:
24 May 2022