Effect of Use of N-95 Mask on Aided Speech Identification Scores in Older Adults with Hearing Loss

The present study aimed to investigate the effect of use of N-95 masks on aided speech identification scores (SIS) in older adults with hearing loss. A total of 35 older adults in the age range of 60 years to 79 years (mean age of 64.97 years) participated in the present study. All the participants were diagnosed with moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss. A prospective pre-test post-test study design was used in the present study with purposive convenient sampling method. The study was carried out in two phases. Phase 1 included the hearing aid fitting and verification. Phase 2 included measuring the speech identification scores (SIS) with and without N- 95 mask. The results of the present study showed that aided SIS scores obtained in without mask condition was significantly better than with N-95 mask condition. Thus is can be concluded that wearing of mask has detrimental effect of SIS in older adults. Hence audiologists can use this as a condition to counsel during hearing aid fitting and also to counsel about the decreased clarity issues due to wearing of mask.