Audiologic Follow-up in Patients With Head and Neck Cancer Treated With Cisplatin and Radiation.

Objectives: Evaluate factors associated with adherence to ototoxicity monitoring among patients with head and neck cancer treated with cisplatin and radiation therapy at a tertiary care center.

Methods: We performed a single-institution retrospective cohort study on adults with head and neck cancer treated with cisplatin and radiation therapy who participated in an ototoxicity monitoring program. The primary outcomes were rates of post-treatment audiograms at the following time points: one, three, six, 12, and greater than 12 months.

Spoken Word Recognition in Listeners with Mild Dementia Symptoms.

Background: Difficulty understanding speech is a common complaint of older adults. In quiet, speech perception is often assumed to be relatively automatic. However, higher-level cognitive processes play a key role in successful communication in noise.

Test-Retest Reliability of Audiometric Assessment in Individuals With Mild Dementia.

Importance: Accurate assessment of hearing is critically important regardless of a person's cognitive ability. The degree to which hearing can be reliably measured in adults with mild dementia has not been determined.

Objective: To obtain quantitative measures of reliability to evaluate the degree to which audiologic testing can be accurately conducted in older adults with mild dementia.

Auditory Evoked Responses in Older Adults With Normal Hearing, Untreated, and Treated Age-Related Hearing Loss.

Objectives: The goal of this study was to identify the effects of auditory deprivation (age-related hearing loss) and auditory stimulation (history of hearing aid use) on the neural registration of sound across two stimulus presentation conditions: (1) equal sound pressure level and (2) equal sensation level.

Design: We used a between-groups design, involving three groups of 14 older adults (n = 42; 62 to 84 years): (1) clinically defined normal hearing (≤25 dB from 250 to 8000 Hz, bilaterally), (2) bilateral mild-moderate/moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss who have never used hearing aids, and (3) bilateral mild-moderate/moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss who have worn bilateral hearing aids for at least the past 2 years.

Results: There were significant delays in the auditory P1-N1-P2 complex in older adults with hearing loss compared with their normal hearing peers when using equal sound pressure levels for all participants.