세계보건기구(World Health Organization)에서는 난청을 전 세계에서 13번째로 흔한 주요 장애로 추정하고 있다. 또한, 후 천성 난청은 당뇨와 후천성 면역결핍증후군의 발병수를 넘어, 2030년에는 7번째의 주요장애가 될 것이라고 예측하였다 (Mathers et al., 2008). 우리나라 국민건강보험공단의 ‘전음성 및 감각신경성 난청’의 건강보험 진료비 지급자료를 분석한 결 과에 따르면, 난청으로 인한 진료인원이 2008년 22만 2,000명 에서 2013년 28만 2,000명으로 연평균 4.8%씩 증가했으며, 전 체 연령대에서 60대 이상이 44.5%로 가장 많은 비중을 차지했 고, 50대 7.1%, 40대 11.5% 순으로 난청으로 인하여 병원을 찾 는 인구가 노년에만 머무르지 않는 것으로 나타났다(National Health Insurance Corporation, 2014).
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop lists of stories for the auditory training and to evaluate the effect of 10-week auditory training using developed stories for hearing-impaired listeners. Methods: A total of fifty-five stories and related subjective and objective questions were developed. In order to validate the training materials, thirty-two participants examined the familiarity of stories, the interest of stories, the difficulty of sentences, the familiarity of words and the difficulty of questions. According to the validation results, the stories were revised and recorded by a professional female speaker. For determining the efficacy of auditory training using developed stories, fifteen hearing-impaired listeners participated. Among them, eight subjects (auditory training group) received the 40-minute, once per a week for 10-week auditory training, and seven control subjects (non-training group) did not receive any auditory training. Sentence recognition scores with and without noise and Korean version of international outcome inventory for hearing aids (KIOI- HA) were evaluated at before and after the auditory training. Non-training group underwent the same battery of tests at the same time intervals equivalent to the training group. Results: Results showed that the auditory training enhanced sentence recognition in quiet as well as in noise conditions. Also, there was positive impacts of training on the results of K-IOI-HA. Conclusion: These results suggested that the 10-week auditory training using the stories is useful to improve speech understanding of hearing aid users as well as their subjective satisfaction on hearing aids.
INTRODUCTION MATERIALS and METHODS RESULTS MATERIALS and METHODS DISCUSSIONS
