Hearing in noise is a common reason for patients to visit a hearing professional. MedRx has supported hearing care professionals by providing speech-in-noise tests built into its audiometers. The company is now able to provide a new speech-in-noise equivalent test with ACT. The ACT test assesses the quality of hearing in noisy situations.
The ACT is different than other tests as it is performed over headphones and is comparable to aided speech-in-noise performance. This gives the clinician a better understanding of how an individual will perform in noise while wearing their hearing aids. The ACT is designed to be performed in the booth and complement existing workflows while providing new information to the clinician.
ACT is a new style of test that uses a custom stimulus resembling speech on a spectrogram embedded in noise. The stimulus is shaped to maximize audibility across the individual’s hearing. As the stimulus is not actual speech, it leads the test to be language independent. This allows clinicians to now test a wider range of patients with speech-in-noise tests. Communities with populations of non-English-speaking and multi-lingual listeners now can provide increased care.
The procedure for the test will be familiar to patients as it requires the use of a push button to indicate a response. ACT uses a wave stimulus presentation, which is a continuous burst of pink noise for the patient. The clinician chooses when to inject the ACT stimulus and the MedRx software monitors the push button correct responses. The test uses the Hughson-Westlake procedure of 2 down 1 up targeting 70.7% correct. The total procedure takes less than 2 minutes to complete.
ACT is a personalized experience as it uses custom stimulus for each individual and is no longer dependent on the language spoken. The ACT is built directly into the MedRx Studio software for ease of use. To learn more about ACT, you can watch the tutorial video, call the MedRx sales and training team at 888-392-1234, or email at [email protected].
