A comparative study of smartphone based app with free field hearing for possible use as a screening test

Abstract

<p class="abstract"><strong><span lang="EN-US">Background:</span></strong>Hearing loss is an invisible injury that has been viewed as an acceptable by-product of military service. It is imperative to detect hearing loss at early stage to take immediate remedial measures. In Indian armed forces the current method of assessment of hearing is primarily by Free Field Hearing which is obsolete and has numerous shortcomings. We contucted a study using free iOS application to detect hearing loss. The objectives of the study were to investigate the validity and reproducibility of app based hearing assement and free field hearing with clinical pure tone audiometer as gold standard. It is cross sectional intra-subject comparative study</p><p class="abstract"><strong><span lang="EN-US">Methods:</span></strong>The study was conducted at CHAF where 200 patients were accrued. Hearing assessment was carried out by Pure Tone Audiometry (PTA) which is gold standard. Thereafter these patients were subjected to hearing assessment by using windows application “freehearingtestsoftware.com” and by free field hearing (FFH). </p><p class="abstract"><strong><span lang="EN-US">Results:</span></strong>Hearing assessment by FFH and hearing check app was compared with PTA. Hearing check app was found to be more sensitive than FFH (98% and 73%). Both modalities had high specificity (95% and 99%). The test retest reproducibility measured with Pearson correlation coefficient was high (0.99) with hearing check app.</p><p class="abstract"><strong><span lang="EN-US">Conclusions:</span></strong>Smart phone application like Hearing check app is a cheap and effective way to assess hearing with reasonable accuracy. It’s high sensitivity and high test retest reproducibility makes it an ideal tool for screening and early detection of hearing loss replacing out-dated free field hearing.</p><p class="abstract"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>

Accuracy of smartphone-based hearing screening tests: a systematic review

“…All of the studies included were published between 2015 and 2020. Nine apps were found: uHear (22)(23)(24)(25) , uHearing Test (25) , EarScale (26) , HearScreen (27,28) , HearingTest (29,30) , Digits-in-Noise Test (10,(31)(32)(33)(34) , hearTest (35,36) , Free Field Hearing (FFH) (37) , Free Hearing Test (37) . The most investigated apps were Digits-in noise Test (5 articles) and uHear (4 articles).…”

“…All apps found in this study used pure tone as the auditory stimulus (23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(35)(36)(37) , except for Digits-in-Noise Test (10,(31)(32)(33)(34) , which used speech stimulation through digits and Free field hearing (FFH) (37) which used words.…”

Development of a Mobile-App Based Free Field Click Test Against Conventional Free Field Voice Test: A Randomized Controlled Trial

“…It was reported that the hearing check app was more sensitive than the conventional voice test (98% and 73%). 21 We report that in our study FFCT has a more standard way of examination with constant broadband sounds produced in correspondence to pure tone average. This differs from FFVT as there was a lack in the standardization of speech sound levels of the examiners.…”

Agreement Between Check Your Hearing Application and Pure Tone Audiometry

“…The test retest reproducibility measured with Pearson correlation coefficient was high (0.99) with hearing check application [14].…”