Audiometric profiles and patterns of benefit: a data-driven analysis of subjective hearing difficulties and handicaps

Abstract

Objective

Hearing rehabilitation attempts to compensate for auditory dysfunction, reduce hearing difficulties and minimise participation restrictions that can lead to social isolation. However, there is no systematic approach to assess the quality of the intervention at an individual level that might help to evaluate the need of further hearing rehabilitation in the hearing care clinic.

Design

A data-driven analysis on subjective data reflecting hearing disabilities and handicap was chosen to explore “benefit patterns” as a result of rehabilitation in different audiometric groups. The method was based on (1) dimensionality reduction; (2) stratification; (3) archetypal analysis; (4) clustering; (5) item importance estimation.

Study sample

572 hearing-aid users completed questionnaires of hearing difficulties (speech, spatial and qualities hearing scale; SSQ) and hearing handicap (HHQ).

Results

The data-driven approach revealed four benefit profiles that were different for each audiometric group. The groups with low degree of high-frequency hearing loss (HL_HF) showed a priority for rehabilitating hearing handicaps, whereas the groups with HL_HF > 50 dB HL showed a priority for improvements in speech understanding.

Conclusions

The patterns of benefit and the stratification approach might guide the clinical intervention strategy and improve the efficacy and quality of service in the hearing care clinic.

Keywords:

• Hearing loss
• participation restrictions
• activity limitations
• data-driven analysis
• auditory profile

Acknowledgements

The authors thank A. Ahrens and O. Cañete for their comments in an earlier version of the manuscript. The authors also want to thank P. Souza and J. Dubno for our discussions and input related to this work. The authors acknowledge the valuable feedback from the members of the Hearing Sciences Scottish Section during the realization of the present study.

Declaration of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Innovation Fund Denmark Grand Solutions [5164-00011B] (Better hEAring Rehabilitation project) Oticon, GN Hearing, WS Audiology and other partners (Aalborg University, University of Southern Denmark, the Technical University of Denmark, Force, Aalborg, Odense and Copenhagen University Hospitals). The funding and collaboration of all partners are sincerely acknowledged. W. W. is supported by the Medical Research Council [MR/S003576/1] and the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government.