Hear In Private Practice

Oct. 02, 2013

Shed a new and brighter light on your practice

Bob Martin
The longer I practice audiology, the more I appreciate the application of light. I’ll explain. We use light to look into ears and hearing aids, and the quality of the light can greatly affect the quality of our inspection. I recently replaced the old desk light that was located directly above my “grinding machine.” The new light is one of
Sep. 23, 2013

Single Sided Deafness

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
Single Sided Deafness (SSD) refers to significant and usually permanent hearing loss in one ear. It is thought to affect at least 9,000 new people in the USA each year. Its most common cause is sudden deafness, which overwhelmingly results in SSD rather than bilateral deafness. Acoustic neuroma – a slow growing benign tumour of the auditory nerve – is
Sep. 18, 2013

Helpful Tools, Helpful Suggestions

Bob Martin
Let me ask you a question.  As a hearing health care professional, when you send a new CIC (completely-in-the-canal) hearing aid to the factory for repair, do you check it when it comes back? And if you find that it’s ‘dead’, what do you do?  Be careful how you answer; you may be surprised. This happened to me twice recently. The
Sep. 10, 2013

Reaction Time and Sudden Decrease in Hearing

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
By: Jennifer Lamfers, AuD We all know that turning the volume up too high or standing too close to speakers is going to permanently damage our hearing and once ringing occurs or we experience a sudden decrease in hearing, there is permanent damage. That is true. But what if that reaction is also partly protective? A study in Australia shows
Sep. 04, 2013

Treat every patient like a patient—even your friends

Bob Martin
I have a Standard Operational Procedure (SOP) that I try to use every time I see a patient. This SOP can be described simply as: look in the ear, look in the hearing aid, measure the amplification, check to be sure the amplification is providing good hearing, and listen to–and solve–any problems the patient may have. In a future article
Aug. 27, 2013

3D Replication of a Human Ear – 3D Printing and More Emerging Technology

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
By: Diana Holan, MS   Inkjet printers use multiple ink cartridges to layer out an image on paper. In the 1980s, 3D printers were developed from the same concept, except the cartridges are filled with various materials that merge together in layers onto a flat surface, guided by a computer generated pattern that actually builds a 3D item in the
Aug. 21, 2013

A quick guide to controlling the feedback “monster”

Bob Martin
At times hearing aids make an ear-splitting screech that will drive most people crazy. This horrific noise, called feedback, occurs in all audio systems, including public address systems. In the hearing care profession, we have been fighting the feedback “monster” for many years. Possibly you may have heard that the incredible improvements in digital processing have eliminated feedback from hearing
Aug. 13, 2013

Hearing Loss Is Another Health Risk to Childhood Obesity

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
In HHMT blogs we have covered hearing loss associated with Cardiovascular disease , diabetes and a variety of other conditions.  This week we focus on a study published in June in The American Laryngological, Rhinological and Otological Society, Inc which links Childhood Obesity and sensorineural hearing loss in adolescents. First, how is Obesity defined?  The Body Mass Index (BMI) is
Jul. 30, 2013

Different Views on How to Proceed with “Selling”

Hearing Health & Technology Matters
Ryan Kalef has written for HHTM several times, usually as a guest Blogger for Holly Hosford-Dunn at Hearing Economics.  When he submitted his views on selling, we felt it was a better fit for the “Healthy Hearing” section.  Both professionals and consumers read this section.  As the co-editor (with Bob Martin), I felt it would be very interesting to show
Jul. 19, 2013

New test is good news for audiologists and their hard-to-test patients

Bob Martin
I want to tell you about a new reason why this is a good time to be an audiologist. The Food and Drug Administration recently approved the marketing in the U.S. of a new test system called HEARLab. The system was researched and developed in Australia by the NAL (National Acoustic Laboratories). It is manufactured in this country by Frye