Dr. Sterling Sheffield from Walter Reed will be presenting on how 21st century audiology patients and interventions demand more complex, multidisciplinary, real-world outcome measures of hearing and speech understanding.

Read the abstract below:

Recent technological and medical advances are increasing the complexity of audiological interventions and the patients we treat. Some examples are children and adults with bilateral preserved acoustic hearing and cochlear implants, older adults with visual and cognitive deficits, children and adults with hidden hearing loss, and binaural processing in hearing aids and cochlear implants. Many of the benefits seen in these patients, or with these audiological interventions, can only be measured with more complex, multidisciplinary, real-world outcome measures of hearing and speech understanding not currently available in audiology clinics. In this presentation, I will review several examples of the advantages of more complex, multidisciplinary outcomes measures of hearing and speech understanding in these groups and audiological interventions. I will also present early pilot work on an audiovisual speech recognition experiment and plans to develop and validate a portable testing system to administer more complex, real-world outcome measures in any sound booth.