2023 Volume 69 Issue 5 Pages 341-349
At our clinic, ear-nose-throat physicians, speech-language pathologists, and certified hearing aid technicians collaborate with each other, and we have hearing aid-fitting software programs from many manufacturers available. In this study, we examined two patients who visited our clinic complaining of dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of their hearing aids and readjusted the devices while investigating the causes of their inadequate fitting. The results of the fit evaluation based on (1) the measurement of the speech intelligibility curve, (3) the measurement of the real ear insertion gain, and (5) the measurement of the functional gain in the Guidelines for Hearing Aid Fitting Tests (2010) suggested that the cause of inadequate fitting in both cases in this study was due to incorrect selection of the hearing aid receiver and earplugs as well as improper adjustment. After changing the type of earplugs and receiver and adjusting the output power, both cases successfully passed the hearing aid fitting evaluations, and the effectiveness of the hearing aids therefore improved. These findings suggest that one reason patients visit a medical institution for dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of their hearing aids is insufficient gain and output of the hearing aids, which may be caused by incorrect selection of the receiver and earplugs of the hearing aids as well as improper adjustment.
