Introduction: We conducted a systematic literature review to investigate the domain of speech-language and hearing sciences (SLHS) in telehealth. Methods: The databases used for the literature search were Web of Knowledge, Pubmed, Scopus, Embase and Scielo. The inclusion criteria consisted of papers published up to August 2014. Papers without peer-review evaluation, and those without abstracts or available full texts were excluded. Results: A total of 103 papers were selected. The selected studies have focused primarily on hearing (32.1%), followed by speech (19.4%), language (16.5%), voice (8.7%), swallowing (5.8%), multiple areas (13.6%) and others (3.9%). The majority of the studies focused on assessment (36.9%) or intervention (36.9%). The use of telehealth in SLHS has been increasing in many countries, especially in the last 5 years. The country with the largest number of published studies was the United States of America (32.03%), followed by Australia (29.12%). The remaining studies were distributed in lower numbers among other countries. Discussion: The advancement of information and communication technologies provides more favourable conditions for providing distance care in several areas. Most of studies concluded that the telehealth procedure had advantages over the non-telehealth alternative approach (85.5%); however, 13.6% reported that it was unclear whether the telehealth procedure had advantages. Some barriers still need to be overcome, such as technology, training, regulation, acceptance and recognition of the benefits of this practice by the public and professionals. The need for speech-language pathologists and audiologists to adapt to this new health care modality is evident.

The aim of this study was to establish parameters for the gaps-in-noise test in normal-hearing young adults. One hundred subjects (50 males and 50 females) received an audiological evaluation to rule out hearing loss and auditory processing disorder. The gaps-in-noise test was then conducted on all subjects. The mean gap detection threshold was 4.19 ms. A psychometric function by gap duration was constructed, revealing that the percentage of correct responses was less than or equal to 5% for a gap duration of 2 ms, 10–30% for a gap duration of 3 ms, 60–70% for a gap duration of 4 ms, and over 96% for gap durations of 5 ms or longer. The results suggest that the data obtained can be applied as reference values for future testing. In the subjects evaluated, the gaps-in-noise test proved to be consistent with low variability.

TEMA: processamento auditivo temporal e resolução temporal. OBJETIVO: realizar revisão teórica sobre processamento auditivo e resolução temporal, bem como sobre os diferentes parâmetros de marcadores utilizados em testes de detecção de gap e como eles podem interferir na determinação dos limiares. CONCLUSÃO: o processamento auditivo e a resolução temporal são fundamentais para o desenvolvimento da linguagem. Em virtude dos diferentes parâmetros que podem ser utilizados no teste em questão, os limiares de detecção de gap podem variar consideravelmente.

Although several studies have investigated the effects of diabetes on hearing loss, the relationship between these two conditions remains unclear. Some studies have suggested that diabetes may cause sensorineural hearing loss, whereas others have failed to find an association. The biggest challenge in investigating the association between diabetes and hearing loss is the presence of confounding variables and the complexity of the auditory system. Our study investigated the association between diabetes and sensorineural hearing loss. We evaluated the influence of time from diabetes diagnosis on this association after controlling for age, gender, and hypertension diagnosis and excluding those subjects with exposure to noise. This cross-sectional study evaluated 901 adult and elderly Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil) participants from São Paulo, Brazil who underwent audiometry testing as part of ELSA-Brasil's baseline assessment. Hearing thresholds and speech test results were significantly worse in the group with diabetes than in the group without diabetes. However, no significant differences were found between participants with and without diabetes after adjusting for age, gender, and the presence of hypertension. Hearing thresholds were not affected by occupational noise exposure in the groups with and without diabetes. In addition, no association between the duration of diabetes and hearing thresholds was observed after adjusting for age, gender, and hypertension. We found no association between the duration of diabetes and worse hearing thresholds after models were adjusted for age, gender, and the presence of hypertension.

In the present study, we evaluated peripheral and central auditory pathways in professional musicians (with and without hearing loss) compared to non-musicians. The goal was to verify if music exposure could affect auditory pathways as a whole. This is a prospective study that compared the results obtained between three groups (musicians with and without hearing loss and non-musicians). Thirty-two male individuals participated and they were assessed by: Immittance measurements, pure-tone air conduction thresholds at all frequencies from 0.25 to 20 kHz, Transient Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions, Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR), and Cognitive Potential. The musicians showed worse hearing thresholds in both conventional and high frequency audiometry when compared to the non-musicians; the mean amplitude of Transient Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions was smaller in the musicians group, but the mean latencies of Auditory Brainstem Response and Cognitive Potential were diminished in the musicians when compared to the non-musicians. Our findings suggest that the population of musicians is at risk for developing music-induced hearing loss. However, the electrophysiological evaluation showed that latency waves of ABR and P300 were diminished in musicians, which may suggest that the auditory training to which these musicians are exposed acts as a facilitator of the acoustic signal transmission to the cortex.

Introduction: Hearing loss (HL) affects people worldwide, many of whom are children. Especially in developing countries, epidemiological data on the prevalence of HL are insufficient to implement effective health promotion programs. In this preliminary study with young adults, we describe and validate a tablet-based hearing screening test developed for interactive remote hearing screening and compare the performance of an audiometry screening tablet application with conventional audiometry. In addition, the sensitivity, specificity, and predictive values of the tablet-based method and the concordance between the two methods were analyzed. Methods: Thirty volunteers participated in a double-blind study assessing two auditory threshold screening methods: tablet-based hearing screening and sweep audiometry. For both methods, a correct response to a minimum of two tones out of three emitted at 20 dBHL for the frequencies of 1, 2, and 4 kHz and 30 dBHL for 0.5 kHz in both ears, was considered a negative screening result (normal hearing), whereas hearing impairment was considered a positive screening result. Results: According to both methods, 26 participants had normal hearing and four had HL. The Kappa coefficient indicated perfect concordance between methods. The tablet-based hearing screening method had a sensitivity of 100% (confidence interval [CI]: 30.5–100.0), a specificity of 100% (CI: 87.1–100.0), a positive predictive value of 100% (CI: 30.5–100.0), and a negative predictive value of 100% (CI: 87.1–100.0). Conclusions: The tablet-based hearing screening test was shown to be a reliable and an accurate method for hearing screening that can be used effectively in places with Internet access and where local audiologists are not available.