Hearing aid design and evaluation for a patient with a severe discrimination loss for speech

Results of intelligibility tests on a single patient with a severe discrimination loss for speech are reported. The patient was tested with four different hearing aids and with no aid, and the effects of opportunity for lipreading, background noise, and reverberation were evaluated. The tests appear to allow an accurate estimate of the amount of help to be expected in various situations and show that an aid with good fidelity is clearly superior to the others tested. The destructive effects of background noise and reverberation are demonstrated separately and in combination.

Sudden death syndrome. The physician's role

From the Children's Orthopedic Hospital and Medical Center, and The Departments of Pediatrics, Preventive Medicine, and Pathology, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington