Background: acclimatization is the period that succeeds the fitting of hearing aids, when a progressive improvement of the hearing and speech recognition abilities is observed due to the new speech cues that are available to the hearing aid user.
Aim: to verify acclimatization after the fitting of hearing aids through objective (speech tests) and subjective (Questionnaire) evaluations.
Method: 16 hearing impaired individuals were evaluated on the first day of hearing aid fitting and were monthly reassessed for three months. In all three months the following speech tests were used: PISR - percentage index of speech recognition through monosyllabic words and SRT--speech recognition threshold through sentences, determining the speech/ noise ratio (S/N). The International Outcome Inventory of Hearing Aid (IOI-HA) was also applied in the first and third months after the hearing aids were fitted.
Results: the comparison between the first day, first, second and third months after the hearing aids were fitted revealed a statistically significant improvement (p<0.001) between the results, not only for the PISR but also for the S/N ratio. No statistically significant difference was found for the results obtained through the questionnaire applied in the first and third months.
Conclusion: the objective evaluation, using speech recognition tests, presents better results in the months following the hearing aids fitting indicating a progressive improvement in the speech abilities from the first month onwards. The subjective evaluation does not reveal an improvement when comparing the first and third moths after the hearing aids were fitted.