Background: The current article is aimed at evaluating speech recognition scores in hearing aid wearers to determine whether nonsense syllables are suitable speech materials to evaluate the effectiveness of their hearing aids.
Method: Subjects were 60 children (15 males and 15 females) with bilateral moderate and moderately severe sensorineural hearing impairment who were aged between 7.7-14 years old. Gain prescription was fitted by NAL method. Then speech evaluation was performed in a quiet place with and without hearing aid by using a list of 25 monosyllable words recorded on a tape. A list was prepared for the subjects to check in the correct response. The same method was used to obtain results for normal subjects.
Results: The results revealed that the subjects using hearing aids achieved significantly higher SRS in comparison of not wearing it. Although the speech recognition ability was not compensated completely (the maximum score obtained was 60%) it was also revealed that the syllable recognition ability in the less amplified frequencies were decreased. the SRS was very higher in normal subjects (with an average of 88%).
Conclusion: It seems that Speech recognition score can prepare Audiologist with a more comprehensive method to evaluate the hearing aid benefits.