Patients with conductive hearing loss, speech understanding in noise evaluation of skills

Conductive hearing loss (CHL) refers to a problem with the transference of sound from the outer/middle ear to the inner ear. Patients with CHL have complaints about understanding speech in the presence of background noise. Speech tests with conventional hearing assesments do not measure hearing in noise. Word recognition tests using monosyllabic andspondees are commonly undertaken in quiet conditions. These tests do not reflect daily life conditions. Speech tests with sentences are more close to everyday communication and more reliable than word recognition tests. Hearing In Noise Test (HINT) assesses functional hearing by Speech Reception Test with sentences (SRTs) under conditions of both quiet and background noise. The aim of our study was to investigate the ability of hearing in noise, adult subjects with bilateral CHL, using the Turkish HINT (T-HINT). The study group with bilateral mild and Moderate CHL, and the control group with normal hearing each consisted of 30 participants 15 men and 15 women. The average age of participants of study group is 30.27±7.5 and control group is 29.97±6.9. The SRTs of both groups are measured in quiet, noise front, noise left and noise right conditions with headphones. The HINT scores of control group in quiet conditions 18.90 dB, noise front -3.07 signal noise ratio (SNR), noise left -11.37 SNR, noise right -11.07 SNR. Study group?s HINT scores in quiet condition 50.93 dB, noise front -0.67 SNR, noise right -2.57 SNR, noise left -2.97 SNR. We found that there is a significant difference between groups under all HINT conditions. As a result our study emphasizes that people with CHL need more SNR to recognise speech in noise than normal hearing peers presence of background noise.Key Words: T-HINT, conductive hearing loss, noise, middle ear.