This study aimed to assess the subjective listening effort in daily life situations of adult cochlear implant (CI) users in a clinical setting using a questionnaire designed for hearing aid (HA) users.
✦ The floor
Discussion
Signed responses from readers of the wire.
Clinicians fitting cochlear implants should consider adding a validated listening-effort questionnaire (such as the LEQ) to routine follow-up to capture self-reported listening fatigue that objective tests may miss.
Subjective listening effort is a clinically meaningful but underassessed outcome in cochlear implant rehabilitation, and validated patient-reported tools could improve quality-of-care monitoring in implant programs.
- 01Study used the Listening Effort Questionnaire (LEQ) with adult cochlear implant users.
- 02Assessed self-reported listening effort across a range of real-world daily listening situations.
- 03Published in American Journal of Audiology — peer-reviewed audiology journal.
- 04Findings could support adding patient-reported outcome measures to CI follow-up protocols.
- 05Subjective measures may capture listening difficulty not detected by standard speech-perception tests.
The Listening Effort Questionnaire is a valid tool for measuring subjective listening effort in adult cochlear implant users in daily life.
studypartially supported- PMID
- 42663607
- DOI
- 10.1044/2026_AJA-25-00220.
- Journal
- American Journal of Audiology
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 4
- Population
- Adult cochlear implant users
- Intervention
- Listening Effort Questionnaire (LEQ) administration to assess subjective listening effort
Primary outcomes
Subjective listening effort scores in daily life situations as measured by the LEQ