Fitting your own hearing aid may be just as good as getting an audiologist to do it

Embargoed until:

Publicly released:

2024-07-12 01:00

For people with mild to moderate hearing loss, self-fitted, over-the-counter hearing aids may offer comparable long-term benefits to hearing aids fitted by professional audiologists, according to a small study by international scientists. They followed up 44 people who received hearing aids, 23 of whom had fitted their own, and found no meaningful difference in tests of hearing aid benefits between the groups eight months after their hearing aids were fitted. 

Journal/conference: JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery

Link to research (DOI): 10.1001/jamaoto.2024.1825

Organisation/s: University of Pretoria, South Africa

Funder: This study received funding
from the hearX Pty Ltd Group and the National
Institutes of Health (1R21DC019598) and support
from R21/R33 mobile technologies for delivering
hearing care through community health workers. The primary investigators were Drs Moore and
Swanepoel. The funder provided the Lexie Lumen
hearing aid devices and software support to
complete data collection.

Media release

From: JAMA

Long-Term Outcomes of Self-Fit vs Audiologist-Fit Hearing Aids
About The Study: This comparative effectiveness research study demonstrated that self-fit over-the-counter hearing aids can offer comparable long-term benefits to audiologist-fit hearing aids for individuals with mild to moderate hearing loss. 

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