Effect of Hearing aid Fitting Based on Real Ear Measurement on Speech Recognition in Hearing Impaired Persons

Real Ear Measurement is a well-known method to evaluate hearing aid output by which all of a person's personal characteristics of ear in hearing aid fitting can be calculated to reach the prescriptive target. The purpose of hearing aid fitting and prescriptive target matching is improvement of speech intelligibility in routine communication. The current project was carried out to assess the effect of fitting based on real ear measurement on word recognition score.
A clinical trial study was designed in which monosyllabic word recognition test was performed before and after real ear measurement. The test was performed on 21 participants with moderate to severe hearing loss, aged between 20-65. The results were analyzed using paired t-test and a significance level of p Verifying with Real ear measurement increased monosyllabic word recognition score and this increase was statistically significant (p value=0.012).
Considering the impact of real ear measurement on improvement of speech intelligibility, which is the ultimate goal of the prescribed hearing aid, the implementation of real ear measurement in hearing aid fitting is recommended.