Research (R)
Bryan M. Wong, AuD
PhD Candidate
University of Arizona
University of Arizona, Arizona
Disclosure(s): No financial or nonfinancial relationships to disclose.
Amy Wheeler, AuD
University of Arizona
University of Arizona
Disclosure(s): No financial or nonfinancial relationships to disclose.
Kasi Kiehlbaugh
Disclosure(s): No financial or nonfinancial relationships to disclose.
The current service-delivery model of hearing healthcare can create unintended barriers for individuals with hearing loss pursuing care. Additionally, plastic waste is a growing environmental concern because it can accumulate in landfills and breakdown into harmful microplastics that pollute oceans and ecosystems. To address both of these concerns, this research takes the first step in evaluating the process and feasibility of creating custom ear molds from recycled plastic water bottles.
Summary:
Rationale/
Purpose: Audiologists rely on third-party manufacturers to supply custom ear molds and hearing aid parts, which can create unintended geographic and financial barriers for patients with hearing loss pursuing care. For example, hearing aids and related custom ear molds can cumulatively range from hundreds to thousands of dollars and coverage is not federally mandated by Medicaid and other health insurance providers (Arnold, Hyer, & Chisolm, 2017). Additionally, the average distance traveled by patients to see an Audiologist in Arizona is 46.1 miles (Coco, Titlow, & Marrone, 2018). Despite recent advances in telehealth, there are some aspects of hearing healthcare that involve in-person follow up, such as fitting of custom ear molds using real ear measures. Furthermore, plastic waste is a growing environmental threat because it can accumulate in landfills and breakdown into harmful microplastics that pollute oceans and ecosystems. The advancement of 3D printing technology, which has been standardly used by the hearing health industry for decades, provides new opportunities to help address these serious issues. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the process and feasibility of creating custom ear molds from recycled plastic water bottles.
Methods: In this study, a novel service-delivery method for the creation of custom ear molds will be described and evaluated. An existing ear mold created by a professional third-party manufacturer will be scanned and edited. Recycled plastic water bottles will then be converted into a hollow-core plastic filament that can be used by a fused-deposition modeling 3D printer to fabricate ear molds. Physical dimensions will be compared between the professional third-party manufactured ear molds and the 3D printed recycled plastic ear molds.
No human subjects will be used in this study and thus IRB is not required.
Results &
Conclusions: Data collection is in progress and will be completed by February 15th, 2024 specified in author instructions. The main statistical analysis includes a one sample t-test. A power analysis using G*Power 3.1 revealed that a sample size of 34 to 54 ear molds will provide 80-95% power to detect a medium effect size of 0.5 for Cohen’s D using a .05 alpha level.
Importance of Work:This study takes the first step in exploring a novel service-delivery pathway that utilizes 3D printing technology in a local setting to fabricate ear molds. This has the potential to not only help reduce aspects of hearing healthcare disparities, but to also help reduce plastic waste.
Innovation: Findings may lead to a novel method of hearing healthcare delivery that has the potential to increase overall hearing health care accessibility for marginalized populations globally while also reducing plastic waste.