Background: In recent years there has been increased interest in the use of Al for assessing hearing handicap and for measuring the potential effectiveness of amplification system.AI is an expression of proportion of average speech signal that is audible to a given patient, and it can vary between 0.0 to 1.0.
Method and Materials: This cross-sectional analytical study was carried out in department of audiology, rehabilitation, faculty, IUMS form 31 Oct 98 to 7 March 1999, on 40 normal hearing persons (80 ears 19 males and 21 females) and 40 hearing impaired persons (61 ears 36 males and 25 females, 25-65 years old) with moderate to moderately severe SNI-IL The pavlovic procedure (1988) for calculating Al, open set taped standard mono syllabic word lists, and the real -ear probe- tube microphone system to measure insertion gain were used, through test-retest.
Results: 1/A significant correlation was shown between the Al scores and the speech recognition scores of normal hearing and hearing-impaired group with and without the hearing aid (P<0.05) 2/ There was no significant differences in age group & sex: also 3 In test-retest measures of the insertion gain in each test and 4/No significant in test-retest of speech recognition test score.
Conclusion: According to these results the Al can predict the unaided and aided monosyllabic recognition test scores very well, and age and sex variables have no effect on its ability. Therefore with respect to high reliability of the Al results and its simplicity, easy -to- use, cost effective, and little time consuming for calculation, it&aposs recommended the wide use of the Al, especially in clinical situation.