PURPOSE: to evaluate the contribution of lip reading for the recognition of speech in patients with auditory neuropathy. METHODS: four subjects were included in the study according to the following criteria: adult patients with auditory neuropathy, with ages over eighteen and under sixty years; auditory neuropathy diagnosis given by the medical team and minimal literacy level. Speech perception tests were performed with and without lip reading, including dissyllabic and trissyllabic word recognition and open set sentence recognition. RESULTS: there was an important variation regarding the level of hearing loss in all the subjects; and a discrimination varying from poor to moderate was noted in relation to the speech recognition index. We observed that in all the tests with lip reading, there was a significant improvement of speech perception. CONCLUSION: the use of lip reading in specific situations enhances hearing perception, contributing for a more effective communication.
Peripheral Nervous System Diseases; Hearing Loss; Speech Perception; Lipreading
