AIM: To correlate the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) obtained by the Portuguese Sentences Lists (PSL) test with the results of the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) of hearing impaired elderly people. CASE REPORT: This study was conducted in the Hearing Aids Laboratory at the Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria.Sixty-four elderly patients, aged 60-87 years, participated in this study. These patients had mild to moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss and were administered the MMSE and the PSL test. From the PSL test, Sentences Recognition Thresholds in Noise (SRTN) was obtained and used to calculate the SNR. The noise intensity was constantly maintained at 65 dBSPL. The SRTN were obtained in a free field, after the hearing aids were fittedin both ears. Spearman's test was used to statically correlate the variables. The mean SNR mean was found to be -1.84 and the average MMSE score was 24.3. Statistically significant correlation was observed between the variables (p = -0.047496). CONCLUSION: The SNR and MMSE scores obtained were very low even in patients with hearing aids. These results indicate that cognitive ability is closely related to the communication ability of the elderly subjects.
