Hearing News Watch

PORTLAND, OR—Many passengers have complained about the loud, sustained roar of a long plane flight. However, Kent J. Neilson, an Oregon man, decided to go beyond simply complaining. He filed a $2 million lawsuit against Delta Airlines,  charging that an April 28, 2010, flight from Minneapolis to Portland caused him to suffer permanent binaural hearing loss, as well as “disabling

By David H. Kirkwood BETHESDA, MD—America’s largest organization of hard-of-hearing consumers is offering encouragement to a controversial program that allows consumers to test their own hearing and purchase hearing aids directly without ever seeing a licensed hearing professional. Writing on the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) web site,  Brenda Battat, the executive director of the 32-year-old advocacy group, noted

BLOOMINGTON, MN–ReSound, one of the largest hearing aid manufacturers in the U.S., has appointed Kimberly Herman as its new president. Herman brings with her more than 20 years of experience in healthcare industry. However, unlike many presidents of hearing aid companies, she is a newcomer to the hearing industry. Prior to joining ReSound, Herman held positions as U.S. president of

By David H. Kirkwood The web this week is alive with the news that one in every five Americans has hearing loss, about double most previous estimates of its incidence. The source of these alarming reports is an article in the November 14 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.1 Written by a team of researchers led by Frank Lin, MD,

WASHINGTON, DC–One of the many free resources available to hearing health professionals from the Better Hearing Institute (BHI) is a collection of syndicated articles that practitioners can use to inform people in their communities about hearing loss and how to prevent and/or treat it. The Better Hearing Institute has developed a new syndicated article summarizing the link between chronic diseases

MINNEAPOLIS–Starkey Laboratories, the largest U.S.-based hearing aid manufacturer, has been named an International CES Innovations 2012 Design and Engineering Awards Honoree for its AMP™ hearing aid. This is the fourth consecutive year Starkey has been so honored, having previously won for SoundLens™, S Series™ with Sweep™ Technology, and Zon™. The CES is the pre-eminent trade association promoting growth in the

NAERUM, DK – The Ida Institute has announced the development of a new counseling tool that provides a patient-centered approach to defining living well for a variety of hearing care patients in a range of clinical settings. Entitled Living Well – Managing Hearing Loss in Daily Life, this innovative tool takes into consideration that each person’s experience with hearing loss

ALBUQUERQUE, NM–The Professional Business Women-Albuquerque chapter has selected an executive of a hearing care practice as “Albuquerque Business Woman of the Year.” Honored was Naina Ballachanda, chief financial officer of Premier Hearing Center, which serves thousands of patients with hearing loss from five locations New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. In the award citation, Ballachanda was described as a “strong female

By David H. Kirkwood  TRENTON, NJ—The characteristically fragmented and fractious hearing healthcare field has suddenly found something to bring it together: the announcement by UnitedHealthcare (UHC), among other companies, that it will sell hearing aids directly to consumers without the involvement of licensed hearing professionals. Since October 3, when hi HealthInnovations™, a division of UHC, began offering hearing aids retailing

LONDON—Two studies, run in tandem, have found that 71% of adults in the United Kingdom can’t always understand clearly what is said on television. One study was a joint project of the Danish hearing aid manufacturer, Widex, and Britain’s Channel 4. The other was undertaken by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). One purpose of the studies was to test the