Despite the fact that millions of individuals may benefit from having hearing aids, many do not wear them due to the high cost or the cultural guilt involved with hearing impairment. As a result, smartphone-connected earbuds have grown in popularity as a means of improving ambient sound quality. However, they are not regulated as medical equipment by the Food and Drug Administration, and it is unknown whether they are as efficient as hearing aids for those with hearing problems.
Professional hearing aids are typically costly and need numerous appointments with otolaryngologists as well as audiologists for tuning, although hearing loss has far-reaching health consequences. These problems make it difficult for many people to obtain professional hearing aids. According to one estimate, approximately 75% of persons with hearing problems in the United States are not using hearing aids.
Personal sound amplification products (PSAPs) may be less stigmatizing and less expensive than prescription or over-the-counter hearing aids. As little more than a result, they become increasingly widely used as a method of boosting sound clarity. However, research as to whether PSAPs are often as beneficial as earplugs for patients with hearing loss is lacking.
The Study's Auditory Process
In a recent study published in the journal iScience, PSAPs, notably the mobile phone Apple AirPods Pro, may function equally as well as conventional hearing aids to enhance speech intelligibility in those with moderate to severe hearing loss. The researchers selected 21 persons with mild to severe sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) according to pure tone audiometry results for their study.
Four gadgets were subjected to electroacoustic examination by the study team. The findings were matched to the American National Requirements Institute (ANSI) hearing aid and PSAP standards.
The participants were then instructed to vocally repeat words from a Mandarin adaptation of the Hearing in Noise TestTrusted Source (MHINT). The scientists read the words to the participants in both quiet and noisy contexts, with ambient noise coming from both the front and left. A basic hearing aid (Bernafon MD1), a quality hearing aid (Oticon Opn 1), and Apple AirPods 2 and AirPods Pro were utilized.
Each participant was put through five scenarios. As the initial three scenes show, no hearing aids are worn, a top hearing aid is worn, and a basic hearing aid is worn. The latter two include utilizing AirPods Pro in conjunction with a smartphone and AirPods 2 in conjunction with a smartphone.
Great Start and Future Feature
After analyzing the data, the researchers concluded with AirPods Pro performed comparably to standard hearing aids in a calm setting. However, it performed marginally worse than premium hearing aids. When disturbances came from the participant's lateral direction, AirPods Pro performed similarly to superior hearing aids in a loud setting. However, when the sounds came from in front of the subjects, neither AirPods model helped them hear better.
Dr. Yen-Fu Cheng, a physician-scientist at Taipei Veterans General Hospital as well as an associate professor at Taiwan's National Yang-Ming Chiao Tung University, as well as the study's corresponding author, told Healthline:
They discovered that AirPods Pro (when used with a smartphone) fulfilled the majority of PSAP electroacoustic criteria (four of five). In noise, AirPods Pro's speech recognition is comparable to that of traditional hearing aids. As a result, scientists determined that AirPods Pro had the chance to be a hearing aid for people with light to moderate loss of hearing. More study, he adds, is needed to examine the safety and viability of utilizing such a notion in other wireless plus smartphone device pairings.
The most popular update of the iOS operating system allows for the entry of a user's audiogram. It can modify input noises at different frequencies based on the unique audiogram, just like traditional hearing aids. This new capability may also help individuals adjust to their hearing impairment by increasing voice perception through 'conversation boost' and 'ambient noise reduction functions. They were intrigued by such powerful features that may benefit people with much more severe or other forms of hearing problems, Yu Cheng says.
RELATED ARTICLE: Food And Drug Administration Approves Over-The-Counter Hearing Aids Without a Prescription, Will Be Available in October
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