AUDITORY PERFORMANCES OF A 3-4-7 PROGRAMMABLE NUMERIC FILTER HEARING-AID

We designed a non-portable prototype seven-filter digital auditory hea ring aid. For each of the filters, frequency bandwidth, amplification and compression were programmable in order to adapt these parameters t o the deaf patient's audiometric characteristics. We compared the hear ing improvement it was possible to obtain either with the three-analog ue filter auditory prosthesis Triton 3004 hearing aid from Siemens or with our prototype as a function of the number of filters (three, four or seven) and their frequency bandwidth programmability. We tested 21 patients suffering from moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss . This study allowed us to demonstrate that a seven programmable-width filter strategy seems to be more effective than the present analogue T004 device. Further studies with improvement of our prototype and fin er audiometric adjustment of filter strategies, together with long-ter m clinical studies, need to be carried out.