DYNAMIC HEARING PROTECTION FOR PEOPLE WITH HEARING LOSS

Mülder HE, Goldbeck F.

Phonak Communications AG, Switzerland.

Wearing time during noise determines to a large extent the effectiveness of hearing protection devices. No matter how high the instantaneous damping may be, the maximum protection is just 10 dB if wearing time is 90% instead of 100%. As a consequence, ideal hearing protection is extremely comfortable, and in fluctuating or intermittent noise ideal hearing protection allows for communication, even in the presence of a hearing loss. To investigate the latter, a group of hearing impaired subjects was equipped with different custom made hearing protection devices, and speech understanding in different noise levels was measured with the OLSA (Oldenburger Satz) test. The hearing protection devices were both passive devices and dynamic devices. The hypothesis was tested whether hearing impaired subjects have better speech understanding in noise when using dynamic hearing protection than passive hearing protection. This may have a direct impact on what persons with hearing loss, often a consequence of noise and non-compliance with unsatisfactory hearing protection, should get as preferred hearing protection type of device.

E-mail: hans.mulder@phonak.com