Abstract

Summary / Objective: To compare the clinical effectiveness of a self-fitting OTC hearing aid with remote support and a hearing aid fitted using audiologist-fitted best practices.

Details / study sample: This randomized clinical effectiveness trial was conducted between April 14 and August 29, 2022. Sixty-eight adults with self-perceived mild to moderate hearing loss were recruited and randomly assigned to either the self-fitting or the audiologist-fitted group. Following bilateral hearing aid fitting, participants first completed a 2-week, take-home field trial without any support. Access to fine-tuning for both groups was only available after the 2-week trial. Support and adjustment were provided remotely for the self-fitting group per request and by the audiologist for the audiologist-fitted group. Participants were then reassessed after an additional 4-week take-home trial.

Results: Sixty-four participants were included in the analytic sample (33 men [51.6%]; mean [SD] age, 63.6 [14.1] years), with equal numbers of participants (n = 32) randomized into each group. The groups did not differ significantly in age (effect size r = −0.2 [95% CI, −0.3 to 0.2]) or 4-frequency pure-tone average (effect size r = 0.2 [95% CI, −0.1 to 0.4]). After the 2-week field trial, the self-fitting group had an initial advantage compared with the audiologist-fitted group on the self-reported APHAB (Cohen d = −0.5 [95% CI, −1.0 to 0]) and IOI-HA (effect size r = 0.3 [95% CI, 0.0-0.5]) but not speech recognition in noise. At the end of the 6-week trial, no meaningful differences were evident between the groups on any outcome measures.

Conclusion: In this randomized clinical effectiveness trial, self-fitting OTC hearing aids with remote support yielded outcomes at 6 weeks post fitting comparable to those of hearing aids fitted using audiologist best practices. These findings suggest that self-fitting OTC hearing aids may provide an effective intervention for mild to moderate hearing loss.

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