What is it about?
The project is trialling a new approach to using off-the shelf music headphones with bone conduction technology as an affordable solution for children with hearing loss caused by middle ear problems such as glue ear. The study shows children with a hearing loss caused by glue ear could hear speech better when they wore the headphones.
Featured Image
Photo by Alireza Attari on Unsplash
Why is it important?
These headphones are available for anyone to buy but have never been trialled on patients with a hearing loss before. They could provide an affordable alternative to hearing aids for children with hearing loss that is caused by a middle ear problem such as 'glue ear' (the most common type of childhood hearing loss).
Perspectives
We know that only 10% of children who are deaf globally have access to hearing aids - an affordable alternative is needed. This study shows that young children with a hearing loss from a condition called glue ear (where fluid builds up behind the ear drum) could hear better and liked wearing off-the-shelf bone conduction headphones linked to a microphone.
Dr Tamsin Mary Holland Brown
Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust & Cambridge University Hospitals
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Using a Bone-Conduction Headset to Improve Speech Discrimination in Children With Otitis Media With Effusion, Trends in Hearing, January 2019, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/2331216519858303.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
