Measuring Hearing Aid Outcomes of Government Funded Hearing Aids in India

Introduction: Hearing loss is one among the persistent sensory deficiency in human populations, involving more than 250 million public in the world. Hearing aids are electrical equipments that aid in optimizing acuity of speech or other sounds. Outcome measures have been of rising concern to audiologists, consumers and hearing aid manufacturers. Aim and Objective • To assess the user satisfaction of government funded hearing aids • To assess the digital quality of free hearing aids provided by the government Method: The study was done on patients who were provided with behind the ear hearing aids in a free hearing aid distribution camp under Assistance to Disabled persons for purchasing / fitting of aids / appliances (ADIP) scheme. A survey was done for 100 subjects by administering the SADL. Results: The SADL satisfaction scores showed high satisfaction ratings for almost all the aspects of the questionnaire. Approximately 80 % of the individuals using the hearing aids provided a positive feedback and were tremendously satisfied with the performance of the hearing aid. Conclusion: Hence to conclude, ADIP scheme hearing aids do satisfy the users in most of the features such as speech understanding, speaking over phone and enhanced hearing.