Symposium Preview: Integrating Science and Clinical Expertise in CAPD and Neuroaudiology

Welcome to this Week in hearing today. My guest is Dr. Frank Musiek, who has put together a special conference titled ‘Quest for the Best CAPD and Neuroaudiology’ So, Frank, can you tell us a little bit about your meeting and the kinds of things that are going to go on there and how we get there and what the costs are and all those kinds of things? Sure, Bob. And I’m happy to talk to you about this. It’s a good opportunity to give us a little background on the meeting, which I think is going to be a very good one. First of all, it is a Zoom meeting. And it is on April 27 it starts at 09:00 for the Pacific coast time. And that would be 12:00 east coast time. So you can make your adjustments. However, you know, and wherever you are, though, if you want to register and you haven’t already you can contact me at [email protected] Or better yet, contact [email protected] That’s Becky, just like it sounds. B e c k y. Smith -sm smith at u k y or University of kentucky.edu. That will get you in, and then we can send you more information. you know, after that, I had gotten a lot of feedback from people who had written me over the past couple years, saying that you know, we really need an update on CAPD and also its kind of offspring, the neuroaudiology discipline. and a lot of people were simply voicing their opinion that they’d like to get a little more of the science mixed in and kind of leaned on me to try to put something together. And so I did, and I pulled some really great faculty together to put on an update on some things that we think are necessary to get out there about CAPD the way it is practiced and some of the science to it. And that really was the impetus for this. We wanted to keep it very, very low in cost, and we did that by going zoom. And I really need to mention this. And that is a hearty thanks to all the faculty people who volunteered their time in order to keep this cost low so that a lot of people could attend. Oh, I’m sorry. That’s the reason for the Quest idea. It’s, we’re searching for this for, for what’s going on right now in CAPD and then how that transitions into the neuro audiology discipline. so what are some of the topics that you guys are going to be presenting at the conference? Well, I think one of the things that we’re going to be doing is we’re going to, we’ve kind of look at the program in a way that we have selected the faculty and kind of invited them to talk about what they like to talk about best. Or maybe I should say it, I kind of envisioned what they are well known for. And we’ve kind of let them take the reins because that’s usually the best way to put together a conference. But I’m going to lead off in the morning after introductions and simply talk about the lineage of CAPD and neuro audiology. And I have to tell you Bob, I don’t think I’ve ever put in the time that I have in this particular lecture, because it’s a personal view of what I thought over the years have been really major things in the area of CAPD and neuro-audiology. And that’s tough to do because you’re always going to leave someone out or something out and certainly have difference of opinions in terms of what are important, groundbreaking research or clinical findings from person to person, depending who you talk to. But I’ve kind of taken the bull by the horns and said I’m going to tell you the things that I think are critical in order to put together a good CAPD neuro audiology program and service. And so that will prove it, prove interesting. I don’t have that much hair, but I was pulling it out in terms of putting together. But I think it’ll be interesting. You’ve got the power lifting going on with that, right? Yeah. So after you let me. Just run through this. Yeah, go through it. Right. Following me is Doris Bamiou, who is from London, who I think is one of the top neuro audiology people in the world at this time. just fantastic individual MD PhD, who has really studied a lot of important aspects of neuroaudiology, but also has looked at disorders probably better than anyone I know, and has brought them into the forefront in terms of using audiology as the tool to investigate these complex problems of the brain that affect hearing in a number of ways. Then after that we have then Nina Kraus, who will be talking about her concussion protocol using FFR. And of course she always has a lot of good things to say. And then we have one of my ex students presenting some information on CAPD and amplification or you know, hearing aids and some new information that’s coming down the pike on that. You know, Bob there are some very interesting things about high quality, mild gain hearing aids that seem to help individuals with CAPD, not all the time, but Alyssa Davidson has done some really nice work, part of it stemming from her dissertation that she did of you at U of A with me a few years back. And so that will be interesting, I think, to you know, to also look at. And I think that we have a pretty good group together in terms of looking at the different aspects of audiology. We are especially pleased to have Jeanane Ferre, who is a very practical practicing audiologist that sees a lot of individual CAPD. And she’s going to bring us information about her protocols, both in terms of diagnostic information, but as well as rehab and setting up diagnostics to feed into the rehabilitation of some of these kids that she looks at. And so we’re happy to have her. And then also we have Jennifer Shinn, who is my co director at the University of Kentucky, of this program. And she’s just been a former student of mine and has just been a tremendous person to contribute to the field in terms of CAPD and neuro audiology. And she’s helped me immensely with pulling this program together and getting CEUs and supporting me along the line in terms of deciding when and who and how we’re going to do this. So hats off to Jennifer. She’s also going to be presenting a case which is very interesting in terms of rehabilitation using dichotic therapies. And then finally we have Maria Abramson, who also has helped put the program together. And she’s going to be talking and a case study format, but she’s going to be talking about frequency pitch discrimination in very young kids and some experience that she’s had. So that’s kind of the, that’s kind of the rundown of what, who’s going to be involved and what we’re going to be doing. So some of the, the fits for overall audiology and most clinical people don’t have as much of an orientation in CAPD as they really should from what most of us have experienced. And I know I didn’t when I was doing my clinical work up until five years ago or so. And, and these are the kinds of people that we all need to listen to probably much more closely than we always had than we have in the past. Yeah. In fact Bob, you touch upon a very important point there that some of the people, not necessarily the faculty, but other people that send me emails, talked to me here, there and everywhere, have really said that, you know, we’ve going into CAPD and practice. we really they claim they really haven’t been well prepared. And that’s been one of the big issues and one of the things that I’ve heard a lot about. And so this is an effort on just not my part, but Jen Shinn’s part and the faculty to try to, how shall we say, fill in some of the gaps in terms of not only the practice, but also the science, which is very important. And if you look at our faculty, we have a really genuine mixture of clinicians and researchers. We also have researchers that have been clinicians and vice versa. And so it’s very well selected group of people that not only can talk to you about the hard science, but also have experience in seeing patients. Yeah, I think that’s the hard part with a lot of the meetings that are going on sometimes, is that it’s all hardcore science. And the clinicians. Yeah, okay, well, that’s okay when it comes out, and I’ll be ready for that someday. or it’s all clinical kinds of things that many of them already know how to do already, and they’re doing, they’re kind of getting some reinforcement, but it looks to me like this is one that kind of takes both of those things and sticks them together so that you can take some things home that are science and maybe a few pointers on the clinical side as well. Yeah, no, and you know, that is our attempt in selecting the faculty and having them how shall we say, discuss with us about what they may be presenting. We hope to that’s what we hope to do. I mean, that’s one of the goals that we really want to fulfill with the idea here. You know Bob, we’ve talked about this and other people have talked about this a lot, but there still seems to be a big gap between individuals that do science, hard science work in the labs and those that are out there in practice. And unfortunately, the bigger that gap is, I think more our discipline suffers because we don’t feed off of each other enough. And I think that is one of the things that not just in neuro audiology and CAPD, but in audiology in general, that we really have to strive to do better and even when I was a student, this was a problem and people recognized it, but it just didn’t seem to take application. And I guess one of the things that this program will do is to try to narrow that gap. And that certainly is one of our goals. And, and I think we will do it. I think people will enjoy it. Will people be able to present a case or so somebody who has a burning issue that they really need to discuss? Will there be some time for questions and interactions with the researchers and the colleagues that are doing the CAPD evaluation? Yeah, and we’ve addressed that in two different ways. One after each session, there will be questions. each speaker will take some, but then also at the end, we have a segment devoted for about 45 minutes, I believe that are these case presentations. So there are going to be three cases that are being presented. And within that format there will be some time to interact and do some things. It’s one of those things where we’ve tried to pack in as much as we can in the four and a half hours. And by the way, we are offering ASHA ceus and for clock hours, it’s four and a half clock hours. And So we have to kind of restrict things a little bit, but we wanted to keep it how shall we say, succinct and on time, but yet cover as much as possible. Now, is there a limit on the register registration for the meeting itself, or is it going to be kind of a small group, you think, or a big group or Kind of hard to figure that out, probably. Well, I mean, we’ve had a lot of registrations already, so it’s probably a pretty good sized meeting. And And that’s one of the reasons we wanted to go zoom, not only to keep the cost down, but also because there are some advantages to doing that. But yeah, I mean, I think that we will probably have. It won’t be an oversized crowd, but it’ll be a pretty, pretty big field with, I think, a variety of people attending to it. And we’re making those accommodations and we hope that people will turn out, or I should say tune in. Tune in and listen to our presentations. Yeah, you hope they tune in and then stay tuned in and not tune out during the. During the tune in. So well, sounds like a. Sounds like a great meeting Frank. And we we’ll all look forward to this. And I think the really cool thing is the melding of the scientists and the clinicians together. As you say, we need a lot more of that, not only in CAPD, but pharmacology and vestibular and some of the other areas that we practice. also, because those things always come up in the middle of when you least expect it. You want to be able to draw from some of these great experiences, to be able to make those decisions as necessary. So well, with that I think we have pretty well discussed your meeting. And so I want to thank all the colleagues that are signed on today for this weekend hearing. And today my guest has been Dr. Frank Musiek, who has put together a fabulous CAPD meeting called the Quest for the best CAPD and the addition of neuro audiology within that mini symposium. Thanks for being with us today, Frank, and we’ll look forward to the meeting. Thanks so much, Bob. I appreciate your interest and hope to see you around the corner.