Validation of a Personalized Hearing Screening Mobile Health Application for Persons with Moderate Hearing Impairment

Journal of Personalized Medicine

Cheng-Yu Tsai¹  Lok-Yee Joyce Li²  Shin-Yi Wang³  Te-Fang Wu⁴  Jinn-Moon Yang⁵  Chih-Jou Chen⁶  Cheng-Jung Wu⁷  Lucas Yee-Yan Wu⁷ 

[1] Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2BT, UK;Department of Medicine, Shin Kong Wu-Ho-Su Memorial Hospital, Taipei 111, Taiwan;Department of Nursing, National Taiwan University Hospital, Hsinchu Branch, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan;Department of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, Kaohsiung 813, Taiwan;Institute of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan;Master Program in School of Nursing, Taipei Medical University, Taipei 110, Taiwan;School of Medicine, College of Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei 110, Taiwan;

关键词: hearing impairment;    conductive hearing loss;    smartphone;    audiometry;    mobile health;   

DOI  :  10.3390/jpm11101035

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Hearing impairment is a frequent human sensory impairment. It was estimated that over 50% of those aged >75 years experience hearing impairment in the United States. Several hearing impairment–related factors are detectable through screening; thus, further deterioration can be avoided. Early identification of hearing impairment is the key to effective management. However, hearing screening resources are scarce or inaccessible, underlining the importance of developing user-friendly mobile health care systems for universal hearing screening. Mobile health (mHealth) applications (apps) act as platforms for personalized hearing screening to evaluate an individual’s risk of developing hearing impairment. We aimed to evaluate and compare the accuracy of smartphone-based air conduction and bone conduction audiometry self-tests with that of standard air conduction and bone conduction pure-tone audiometry tests. Moreover, we evaluated the use of smartphone-based air conduction and bone conduction audiometry self-tests in conductive hearing loss diagnosis. We recruited 103 patients (206 ears) from an otology clinic. All patients were aged ≥20 years. Patients who were diagnosed with active otorrhea was excluded. Moderate hearing impairment was defined as hearing loss with mean hearing thresholds >40 dB. All patients underwent four hearing tests performed by a board-certified audiologist: a smartphone-based air conduction audiometry self-test, smartphone-based bone conduction audiometry self-test, standard air-conduction pure-tone audiometry, and standard bone conduction pure-tone audiometry. We compared and analyzed the results of the smartphone-based air conduction and bone conduction audiometry self-tests with those of the standard air conduction and bone conduction pure-tone audiometry tests. The sensitivity of the smartphone-based air conduction audiometry self-test was 0.80 (95% confidence interval CI = 0.71–0.88) and its specificity was 0.84 (95% CI = 0.76–0.90), respectively. The sensitivity of the smartphone-based bone conduction audiometry self-test was 0.64 (95% CI = 0.53–0.75) and its specificity was 0.71 (95% CI = 0.62–0.78). Among all the ears, 24 were diagnosed with conductive hearing loss. The smartphone-based audiometry self-tests correctly diagnosed conductive hearing loss in 17 of those ears. The personalized smartphone-based audiometry self-tests correctly diagnosed hearing loss with high sensitivity and high specificity, and they can be a reliable screening test to rule out moderate hearing impairment among the population. It provided patients with moderate hearing impairment with personalized strategies for symptomatic control and facilitated individual case management for medical practitioners.

【 授权许可】

Unknown