Researchers report on a field test of a non‐occluding hearing instrument

Hearing aid patients frequently complain that their own voice sounds “boomy,” hollow, or muffled because the hearing aid occludes the ear canal. The occlusion effect is particularly troublesome for persons with high-frequency hearing losses, and may sometimes be so annoying for the wearer that it outweighs the benefits of amplification. Hearing aid fitters commonly alleviate the occlusion effect by increasing the openness of the hearing aid fitting through venting of the earmold or hearing aid shell. However, this increases the likelihood of acoustic feedback, which severely limits the amount of high-frequency gain available for the fitting. Consequently, one of the main challenges in the acoustic design of a hearing instrument is to achieve as much openness as possible even for high-frequency losses that require significant amplification in the high-frequency range. There would clearly be great demand for a hearing aid that combined an occlusion-free solution with the ability to provide sufficient high-frequency gain. Various manufacturers offer products or signal processing strategies specifically designed for highfrequency hearing losses while attempting to pro-