Investigation of the effects of age and presbycusis on hearing with the presence of noise using a Turkish hint

Communication has significant importance in the everyday life of human beings; however, the aging process causes deterioration in communication skills for older people. Presbycusis is a type of sensorineural hearing loss which comes with old age. Individuals who suffer from prebycusis, often have complaints about understanding speech especially in the presence of background noise. Speech tests with conventional hearing assesments do not measure hearing with background noise. Word recognition tests using monosyllabic and spondees are commonly undertaken in quiet conditions. These tests do not reflect real 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 (SRTs) using sentences under conditions of both quiet and background noise. The purpose of our study was to investigate the effects of age and presbycusis on hearing with the presence of noise using a Turkish HINT.The study group with presbycusis and the cont rol group with normal hearing each consisted of 30 participants 15 man and 15 women. the average age of participants of study group was 64.50±9.2 and cont rol group is 59.57±7.9. The SRTs of both groups were measured in quiet, noise front, noise left and noise right conditions with headphones. The HINT scores of cont rol group in quiet conditions 26.23 dB, noise front -0.70 dB signal noise ratio (SNR), noise left -8 dB SNR, noise right -7.43 dB SNR. Study group?s HINT scores in quiet condition 45.60 dB, noise front 1.17 dB SNR, noise right -3.17 dB SNR, noise left -3.33 dB SNR. We found that there was a significant difference between groups under all HINT conditions. This result emphasizes that people with presbycusis need more SNR to recognise speech in noise than normal hearing peers. Although the cont rol group has better SNR compared to normal hearing young people they need more SNR. As a result; our study showed that understanding speech presence of background noise is effected by age and age related hearing loss presbycusis.Key Words: Presbycusis, HINT, Noise, Speech Reception Threshold, Hearing Loss.