Speech recognition according to the length of hearing aid use.

Unlabelled: The use of hearing aids can provide plasticity to the hearing system as well as improve speech recognition as time goes by.

Aim: To compare the influence of the length of hearing aid use on the benefit obtained with the hearing aids in adults and the elderly, new hearing aids users.

Materials And Methods: Prospective study with 40 individuals with mild to moderate-severe sensorineural hearing loss, gathered in 2 groups: Adults Group--13 people aged between 28 and 59 years old; and Elderly Group--27 people aged between 61 and 78 years old. These people were assessed 14 and 90 days after hearing aid fitting. Sentence recognition threshold in silence and under noise as well as the percentage indexes of sentences recognition in silence and under noise were obtained.

Results: The comparison between values obtained after 14 and 90 days of hearing aid use did not show statistically significant differences. When comparing values between the groups, no statistically significant difference was observed either.

Conclusion: We did not find influences of the length of hearing aid use and the benefit obtained from using them; the results achieved by adults and the elderly were similar.