Abstract
Speech reception of the hearing impaired who were using FM-wireless hearing aid systems was evaluated under the simulated noisy environments created in an anechoic room and under the practical noisy environments. The word intelligibility was investigated under two conditions of S/N=0dB and S/N=10dB in eleven subjects, who were the aged having sensorineural hearing impaiment with the mean hearing levels between 40dB and 70dB. The word intelligibility was increased by using the FM-wireless hearing aid system in the range of 5% to 55% or 15% to 70% compared with microphone inputs, in both testing conditions respectively. As the results, the trial use in practical environments showed good speech reception against the case of using their own hearing aids.
Furthermore, a patient paging system composed of the FM-wireless hearing aid systems, was operated temporarily in a hospital lobby. Twenty six subjects with the mean hearing levels between 23dB and 100dB, who were waiting for medical examination and listening to CD-music through the FM-wireless hearing aid. When the name of patients was called through the wire-less equipment, it was found that the calling voice was perceived clearly by most subjects (81%) including severely hearing-impaired persons.
