Hear In Private Practice

Many of us make a living doing hearing tests and fitting hearing aids. Unfortunately, the diagnostic tests we use were developed to provide a medical evaluation of hearing. They were not designed with rehabilitation in mind. Conventional hearing tests provide a lot of useful information, but they do not give us a sufficient perspective on how best to help the

By Diana Holan, MS Hearing loss is the #1 disability for military veterans, which is attributed to acute or chronic exposure to excessive noise. However, studies from the last 20+ years have shown that working in excessive noise while inhaling toxic chemicals, including jet fuel, may be even more ototoxic than noise exposure alone. Such hearing loss may take 2-5 years

One of the great joys of having led a long and busy professional life is the pleasure that comes from growth. We all have much to learn and there is nothing like vast amounts of experience to help us refine the skills we use at work each day. Today’s post, on whether or not to make custom hearing aids (or

The American Academy of Audiology and Hearing Loss Association of America have put together in separate documents some interesting facts about hearing loss. Beth Benites, AuD, compiled a list to bring some of these facts to our attention. They can be used for all ages! Sitting close to loudspeakers at concerts (which can reach about 120 decibels) can damage your hearing in

As audiologists and hearing aid specialists, we are all in the communication business. It’s our job to help our patients communicate better. It’s only natural, then, that there will be times and situations in the practice of our profession that we are called upon to make an extra effort to communicate effectively with the people who come to us for

By Marshall Chasin  This post, which was originally published in the April 2014 Hearing Review, is republished here with the permission of Hearing Review. It is almost as if music has something in common with everything- psychology, physiology, acoustics, engineering, most areas of the arts, and now the lowly spondee. Recently I have been reading a book on combinatorial mathematics  (don’t

If you are new to audiology, be careful when you read this article. Today I want to tackle an advanced concept, so you need to have considerable experience and well-developed intuition when you attempt to employ these ideas. Listed below are hearing thresholds for six patients. For the sake of simplicity I’m showing you their hearing thresholds for only ear

Diana has delved through the research to provide a follow-up to a previous post on the damages of second-hand smoke that I published on this blog in October 2012. By Diana Holan “Smoking by pregnant women may result in fetal injury, premature birth, and low birth weight.” Because nicotine causes blood vessels to constrict, adequate oxygen and necessary nutrients have difficulty

Manufacturers build a lot of “help” for us into their hearing aid fitting software. This includes many suggestions for helping our patients hear in a wide variety of listening conditions. But sometimes, you can find a better fitting—a really excellent fitting–by doing a little trial-and-error rather than depending on the manufacturer’s suggestions. Many years ago I was trying to help

By Marshall Chasin The following post originally appeared in the March 2014 issue of The Hearing Review and is published here by permission of that journal. Actually, we should be discussing “loudness and sound level” and not “loudness and intensity.” Intensity is a rarely used concept in our field because both the amplitude (sound level) and the direction of the sound will