Hearing Aids for Veterans With Functional Hearing Difficulties

Summary

Every year, approximately 100,000 Veterans seek help at VA Audiology clinics for hearing and communication difficulties only to learn that they have normal hearing sensitivity. Unfortunately, there are very few established options to improve hearing and listening for these patients. To address this need, audiologists are increasingly prescribing hearing aids set to provide a small amount of amplification. Patients may benefit from the amplification or from modern hearing aid features such as noise reduction technology and the ability to stream sounds from a desired sound source directly to their ears thus reducing the background noise. This project will help to determine if prescribing hearing aids to patients without hearing loss is, in fact, beneficial and if so, why. It will also help to determine if some patients benefit more from hearing aids than others so that in the future, rehabilitation strategies can be better targeted toward individuals.

Conditions

• Auditory Processing Disorder

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Communication Counseling

Individuals randomized to this group will receive information on how to improve their ability to hear and communicate including general tips on environmental modification and communication repair strategies and personalized tips to help with patient-specific listening difficulties. This is consistent with current audiological standard of care.

DEVICE

Hearing Aids

Hearing aids will be provided with amplification settings programmed specific to each participant's pure-tone hearing thresholds with subsequent adjustments based upon participant preferences. Standard noise cancelation and signal-to-noise ratio improvement strategies will be activated.

DEVICE

Remote Microphones

Remote microphone systems will be provided for use with hearing aids.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• VA Office of Research and Development

  lead FED

Principal Investigators

• Melissa A Papesh, PhD · VA Portland Health Care System, Portland, OR

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

79 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2025-03-09

Primary Completion

2027-10-29

Completion

2028-03-31

FDA Device

Yes

Countries

• United States

Study Locations