Unilateral hearing loss（UHL）is characterized by difficulty in hearing only in limited situations, rather than constant hearing loss. There are many situations in daily life where hearing loss can occur in patients with UHL. In terms of the course of life, people with UHL will begin to perceive the maximum difficulties when they start working as adolescents, because information and relationships become more complex. Although not all children with congenital UHL develop delays in language development, a high percentage of them do. Therefore, careful follow―up is necessary. Parents of children with UHL seek information and advice on the lifelong development course of UHL. Acquired UHL is more difficult to deal with and requires more consideration and support. Since more and more of patients with UHL and their families are seeking information about and a better understanding of UHL, it is necessary to provide services that are sensitive to the feelings of these patients and their families.

　 The results of a nationwide survey of unilateral sensorineural hearing loss conducted as part of the AMED study are reported. The primary survey examined the age at onset, etiology, and severity of unilateral hearing loss (UHL), and whether the patients had received any intervention. The secondary survey examined the type of intervention, the goal of the intervention, and the effectiveness of the intervention. Internal auditory canal and cochlear canal stenosis were the most common causes of hearing loss in pediatric congenital cases, whereas sudden hearing loss was the most common cause of hearing loss in pediatric and adult cases of acquired UHL. The hearing loss was most commonly severe in children and moderate in adults. In regard to interventions, 2.4% of children and 4.0% of adults had received intervention. The most common devices used were air conduction hearing aids, and crossed hearing aids were used for aiding hearing above 100 dB. The most common intervention goal was improvement of hearing difficulty; improvement of tinnitus and directional hearing were less common goals. Hearing aid effectiveness was observed in a certain number of cases regardless of the hearing level, underscoring the importance of a hearing aid trial.

　　For patients presenting with tinnitus without hearing loss, a sound generator (SG) is commonly used and the patients are encouraged to listen to natural environmental sounds. However, there are sometimes wearability and cost issues associated with the use of SG, and in cases encouraged to listen to natural environmental sounds, sounds can often not be produced at night due to problems in the patient's living environment. We investigated whether it would be possible to resolve these problems by having the patients wear a wearable speaker around their neck to listen to natural environmental sounds.

　　We provided wearable speakers to five patients who presented with tinnitus without subjective hearing loss and instructed them to wear the speakers for a period of three months before conducting further evaluations. In four of the five cases, the subjects wore the wearable speaker effectively during times when tinnitus was present. All the participants indicated that it was superior to using stationary acoustic devices, generally yielding positive results. However, improvements in the scores on the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) were observed only in two cases, and there was no clear trend towards improvement in the scores on the anxiety and depression-related questionnaire. This suggests that psychological interventions such as educational counseling, may be necessary to encourage patients to adapt to tinnitus.

　　We conducted a WEB web-based questionnaire survey of physicians (otolaryngologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists) who routinely examined tinnitus patients, to understand the actual medical conditions of tinnitus and identify the important problems with tinnitus treatment. Responses were received from a total of 281 physicians, including 118 otolaryngologists from hospitals with more than 200 beds (HP) and 109 otolaryngologists from hospitals with less than 200 beds (GP), and 54 psychologists/psychiatrists. The referral of tinnitus patients to otolaryngology HP was mostly from otolaryngology and general internal medicine departments, and hearing loss was a common primary underlying disease in tinnitus patients. The most common treatment option used by physicians was pharmacotherapy, but treatment satisfaction was the lowest for this treatment modality as compared with other treatment options. The results of this questionnaire survey revealed dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of commonly used drug therapies. Additionally, despite the existence of highly recommended and highly satisfactory treatment methods, there are challenges that make widespread adoption difficult. New treatment options for tinnitus are desired, regardless of the department or institution at which the patients are treated.

　　In this study, we investigated the voice discrimination ability of children using cochlear implants (CI) and the factors associated with their voice discrimination ability. The participants were 17 CI children and 20 children with normal hearing. We administered voice discrimination tasks using manipulated speech with fundamental frequency (F0), which is related to voice pitch, and formant frequency, which is related to voice quality, to the participants. The discrimination thresholds of the CI children for the F0 and formant frequency was 1.00 semitone (st) and 1.44st, respectively. Under the condition in which the F0 and formant frequency were combined, the threshold of the CI children was 0.50st, the lower limit value.

　　The results show that the age at of implantation was associated with the discrimination threshold formant frequency, with CI children who were implanted at an earlier age showing better discrimination ability. Speech recognition scores were significantly related to the F0 discrimination threshold and formant frequency discrimination threshold. While previous studies indicated that CI children had difficulties in discriminating voices, this study showed that they were able to discriminate even slight differences in voice. CI children who were implanted at an earlier age tended to discriminate voice quality more easily, and but CI children tended to have difficulties in discriminating the pitch and voice quality when they had a low speech recognition score.

　　The authors report on the actual situation of team care in their outpatient hearing aid clinic, identify current problems, discuss the role of speech-language-hearing therapists (ST) in hearing aid treatment, and discuss future directions.

　　The withdrawal rate, hearing aid purchase rate, and patient satisfaction rate were investigated in 315 patients at the clinic. A total of 41 patients (13.0%) completed the first step (hearing aid inducion) but did not move to the next step, and the 47 patients (17.2%) who proceeded to the 2nd step (hearing aid lending on a trial basis) withdrew before taking the final fitting test. The purchase rate in the patients who tried listening/lending was 81.0%. The patient satisfaction rate was extremely high at both the 1st (96.2%) and 2nd (92.7%) steps.

　　The high satisfaction and hearing aid purchase rates in this study suggest that the functioning of the hearing aid practice by an ST as a coordinator of the team, under the direction of a physician overseeing hearing aid practice, as well as ST's support of patient acceptance, would result in high rates of patients being satisfied with wearing hearing aids.