In the March/April 2018 issue of Audiology Today, I compared the professions of audiology and optometry and examined some of the successes of optometry in establishing autonomy and an expanded scope of practice. You may want to stop here and give it a read. I’ll wait.
A Proposed Protocol: Assessment for Patients with Single-Sided Deafness or Asymmetric Hearing Loss
Do you fit bone-conduction hearing aids, contralateral routing of signals (CROS) hearing aids, and/or cochlear implants to your adult patients with single-sided deafness or asymmetric hearing loss (with the four-frequency pure-tone average in the poorer ear being greater than or equal to 70 dB HL)? Curious which one is the best treatment? If so, you may be interested in a consensus paper by Van de Heyning et al (2016).
Academy Research Conference 2017: Interview with Dr. Anne Marie Tharpe
Pediatrics: Advancements in Assessment and Rehabilitation
AT: Dr. Tharpe thank you for taking the time to speak with me today about the Academy Research Conference 2017, titled Pediatrics: Advancements in Assessment and Rehabilitation. You have compiled an impressive list of speakers, what went into your decision-making?
NPR Interviews Gifford About Her Work with Cochlear Implant Patients
National Public Radio's "Science Friday" launched a six-part series highlighting women in science with a 10-minute video documentary featuring Academy member Dr. Rene Gifford and her work with cochlear implant patients at Vanderbilt University.
Intervention for children with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) represents a significant challenge in pediatric audiology. A critical tool for the fitting of amplification in young pediatric patients, the auditory brainstem response (ABR), is compromised in this population for estimation of behavioral thresholds. Despite compromised ABR responses, cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEP) can often be recorded from ANSD patients, and there is emerging research in the application of CAEP for estimation of behavioral thresholds in this population (He et al. 2013).
Study Finds Support for Classroom Acoustics Standards (ANSI/ASA, 2010)
A recently-published study by Frank Ingelhart evaluated the speech perception performance of 23 children with cochlear implants and 23 children with normal hearing through the speech frequencies (500-4000 Hz). Speech perception testing was completed in a classroom environment at three different reverberation times—0.9 seconds, 0.6 seconds, and 0.3 seconds.
Parents of Deaf Children, Stuck in the Middle of an Argument
Thoughtful piece on the dilemma faced by parents of “deaf” children. One thing that many audiologists might take issue with is the statement that “hearing aid use in children, which requires years of visits with doctors, audiologists, and speech therapists, remains controversial.” Studies show that early diagnosis, ongoing intervention with hearing aids, and aural (re)habilitation is beneficial for children with adequate residual hearing.
Single-Sided Deafness, Cochlear Implants, and Speech Understanding
Zeitler et al (2015) reported on nine people (ages 12 to 63 years) with single-sided deafness (SSD) and normal hearing in the other ear, all of whom underwent cochlear implantation in the SSD ear. With regard to post-op speech understanding in noise, the authors report “one of our aims was to assess the value of a CI for SSD patients when the listening environment simulated a ‘real world’ situation, that is, listening in a restaurant where the talker was on the side of the CI.
The Importance of Frequency Regions for Cochlear Implant Patients
Sladen and Ricketts (2015) report that given current cochlear implant (CI) technology, the majority of post-lingually deafened adults achieve 80 percent word recognition (in quiet) after only six months experience with a CI. In their study, CI users were presented with monaural information and the NH listeners had binaural input. The noisy condition was a 10 dB SNR with six-talker babble. Of note, “the average decrease in performance between quiet and noisy conditions was 13% for the NH group and 20 percent for the CI group.”
Pediatrics: Advancements in Assessment and Rehabilitation