Costly hearing aids nearly matched by inexpensive devices
Those with hearing loss don’t have to pay thousands of dollars to get effective relief, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Personal sound amplifiers purchased over the counter can perform nearly as well in improving speech understanding as hearing aids costing five times as much, the study found. It can be read at j.mp/heaids.
Hearing aids can only be purchased in the United States from a licensed professional. They cost an average of $4,700 for two devices, which are not covered by Medicare, the study stated.
Personal sound amplifiers cannot legally be sold to help the hearing-impaired, but are sometimes used for that purpose. The expense of professional hearing aids places them out of reach of many people.
Hearing specialists have said some of these sound amplification devices are being sold inappropriately as a hearing corrective.
The study suggests an alternative, which is to set up a new regulatory category for over-the-counter hearing devices that meet specifications.
Researchers led by Nicholas S. Reed of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine compared one hearing aid, which costs $1,910, to five personal sound amplifiers, costing from $350 to $30.
The devices were tested by 42 adults with mild to moderate hearing loss. The subjects had an average age of 72, and two-thirds were women.
All testing was performed in a sound booth by an audiologist, the study said. The testers were presented with a “moderately difficult listening environment,” with sentences delivered by a speaker directly in front of the subjects, while speech babble was projected directly behind the subjects.
“The mean unaided accuracy was 76.5 percent,” the study stated. “The hearing aid improved speech understanding accuracy to 88.4 percent for an absolute improvement difference of 11.9 percentage points.”
Three of the personal sound amplifiers improved speech understanding to within 5 percentage points of the hearing aid. One device produced little improvement, and the fifth actually decreased speech understanding.
Limitations of the study include the modest number of participants, and testing with a small sample of hearing technologies, it stated.
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