Evaluation of real-world preferences and performance of hearing aids fitted according to the NAL-NL1 and DSL v5 procedures in children with moderately severe to profound hearing loss

Objective: The study aims to compare the performance of hearing aids fitted according to the NAL-NL1 and DSL v5 prescriptive procedure for children. Design: This is a crossover four period trial. Study sample: Sixteen school-aged children with moderately severe to profound hearing losses participated in the study. The children were fitted with Phonak Naida V SP hearing aids according to the two prescriptive procedures. Results: The results showed that children performed significantly better with DSL v5 than with NAL-NL1 prescription for sentence perception in quiet. The paired-comparison judgments of speech intelligibility showed seven children significantly preferred the DSL v5 prescription while two children preferred the NAL-NL1 prescription. The average scores on functional and ratings by parents and teachers performance of children in real life were significantly better for the DSL v5 prescription. At the end of all trials, nine children preferred the DSL v5 prescription, four preferred the NAL-NL1 prescription, and two had no preference. Conclusions: Hearing aids fitted based on the DSL v5 procedure would seem to be more appropriate than the NAL-NL1 procedure for children with moderately severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss, at least in quiet listening environments.