Now hear this:
The newest options for treating hearing loss
Carol Leslie Holmes was in her early 20s when she began experiencing hearing loss symptoms.
“I was working in a print shop and was at the front of the store, answering phones and talking with customers, and I remember that I kept asking people to repeat what they were saying,” recalls the 62-year-old Calgary resident.
When one customer from the Canadian Hearing Society suggested she undergo testing, she was shocked when results indicated that she was borderline deaf.
“I never really believed (those findings), but I did know that my hearing had begun to deteriorate,” she says.
Further testing revealed scarring in her left ear, which accounted for some of her hearing difficulty, and recent tests have suggested that Holmes would benefit from wearing a hearing device.
While she doesn’t plan to buy one now, “I may reconsider in a few years, because I’ve noticed my hearing is most affected when I’m tired, and I often find myself reading people’s lips to decipher what they’re saying.”
According to David Patterson, audiologist and owner of Pindrop Hearing Centres in Calgary and High River, it’s not uncommon for patients to feel a level of reluctance about treating or correcting hearing issues. But he adds the plethora of treatment options often helps ease those concerns.
“It’s quite common that people assume hearing aids are the only solution for hearing loss, when in fact, depending on the cause of it, hearing aids may not be considered a helpful treatment option at all,” he says.
In a nutshell, the reasons for hearing loss are either conductive (treatable), sensorineural (permanent) or something in between. The vast majority of people diagnosed with hearing loss fall into the sensorineural category. They are generally prescribed hearing aids as their most viable treatment option. Surgical and implant options are usually best for patients with conductive hearing issues or profound hearing loss.
“In this latter instance — only 10 per cent of those with hearing loss fall into the ‘profound’ category — a cochlear implant is a potential option if the patient meets the candidacy criterion established by the health authority.”
Should an implant be deemed appropriate, Patterson says the device aids the wearer by essentially bypassing the traditional hearing mechanisms of acoustics.
“What happens instead is sound is converted into an electric signal, which is then stimulated directly to the auditory nerve, and the brain learns to adapt to and interpret these signals as speech and other sounds,” he says.
With hearing aids, the device picks up sound, processes it digitally and then reproduces the signal to the patient’s ear canal.
“There are many different levels of technology available, which represent many different price points, but generally speaking, the higher the cost of the aid, the more comfortable background noise is, the better the speech understanding in noise is, and the better the overall sound quality and experience for the patient.”
In terms of expected longevity for devices, both implants and hearing aids can be replaced as they either wear out with time or as newer, more advanced technologies appear.
According to Patterson, innovations are always occurring.
“The aids we use today have far better sound quality, perform much better in situations with competing background noise and pair easily with tools of the modern world, such as smartphones, which allow patients to stream audio content or take calls directly to their hearing aids via Bluetooth capabilities. They’re the best the industry has ever seen, and as such, satisfaction rates are also much higher,” says Patterson.
While the future of audiology technology is anyone’s guess, he says the industry’s focus on patients remains a constant.
“Regardless of their requirements, we make it our goal to select a device or treatment based on (each person’s) unique issues and needs, knowing the right one can offer a great deal of improvement in quality of life, and hope for the individual.”