National Better hEAring Rehabilitation (BEAR) project: : A status on the database with special focus on patients’ motivation on hearing aid treatment

It is estimated that around 250,000 people (DK) own a hearing aid (HA) and that about 20% do not use their hearing aids regularly. The reasons for this are not understood, but it is clear that these 20% do not perceive the benefit of their devices to be sufficient. The goal of the BEAR is to improve hearing rehabilitation through an update of clinical practice. As a part of the BEAR project a clinical database has been created to document the current hearing aid treatment of hearing impaired people in Denmark. The database will collect knowledge of different aspects that may prove to be important for user satisfaction. Data are collected from consecutive clinical data, from the Dept. of Audiology Odense and Aalborg University Hospital, and from several additional questionnaires. As a part of the survey the patients are asked to score their motivation to acquire a HA. With the use of the database it is possible to analyze whether one or more of patient stand out compared to others. A status on demographic data compared with motivational scores will be presented. Whether HA-motivation of the individual patients has an essential role in user satisfaction is not well investigated. With this project a broad variety of variables will be investigated and the aim is to identify clinically relevant subgroups which previous studies have not been able to succeed in.