Clinic - Week 5

This week in clinic I saw an 86 year old female. She was accompanied by her son and daughter-in-law. She has been a hearing aid wearer for 6 years. Her old Siemens LifeSound hearing aids do not seem to be giving her enough amplification and therefore are not providing her enough help in understanding and hearing speech. She came in to see what options we could give her. When looking back in her file, we found she had not been given a hearing evaluation in 6 years so that was immediately put on the list of "things to do" A listening check was done and her right aid appeared to be weak and was intermittent. She had purchased extended warranty that was up in December, so the decision to send this aid back while still under warranty was made.

Next, a hearing evaluation was done. Her thresholds had shifted ~15 dB at most frequencies. Her loss was now a moderate sloping loss. At this time the discussion of purchasing new hearing aids came about. Her old aids were not digital and could not be "reprogrammed" to her new audiogram. She was excited for new aids and the decision to get them was made. Earmolds were made bilaterally and new Widex aids were ordered. I am looking forward for her to return for the hearing aid orientation and programming. I like to be able to follow a patient through this entire process so hopefully I will get to see her again :)

We also talked to her about the changes in her new hearing aid, for example that it would not have a volume control and it could be further reprogrammed should her hearing loss change again over the next five years. I found this article talking about compression and automatic gain control which also goes along with what we have been talking about it Dr. Lundeen's amplification. Hope you like it :)

Hickson, L. (1994) Compression amplification in hearing aids, American Journal of Audiology, 3, 51-65.

http://aja.asha.org/cgi/reprint/3/3/51?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=volume+control+and+hearing+aids+&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT