2020 Volume 123 Issue 12 Pages 1380-1387
The main features of the Utsunomiya method auditory rehabilitation are “full-time hearing aid use from day 1 of rehabilitation with frequent examinations and adjustments for 3 months,” and “the presence of a speech therapist specialized in audiology in charge of hearing aid outpatients.” We established a hearing aid outpatient clinic adopting this method and examined the results over a period of 3 years. Data of a total of 174 subjects who underwent hearing rehabilitation at the hearing aid outpatient clinic of Keiyu Hospital from April 2016 to March 2019 were examined. We investigated the rehabilitation-dropout rate, hearing-aid purchase rate, and accuracy rate of hearing aid fitting by the sound field test and speech intelligibility test.
The results revealed a rehabilitation-dropout rate of 2.9%, hearing aid purchase rate of 94.8%, and accuracy rate of hearing aid fitting by the sound field test of 97.6%, and by the speech intelligibility test of 94.7%.
For patients with hearing loss, we found that this method was particularly useful for patients who had difficulties in their daily living due to hearing loss and showed a willingness to improve their hearing.
