Auris Repletus by Dr. Tom Goyne

Better Hearing Institute's Effort to Lower Taxes

Link: Better Hearing Institute: Hearing Aid Tax Credit Website - Welcome!.

Several factors deter the patients I encounter everyday from obtaining proper amplification.  The largest, of course, is denial that their hearing loss is affecting their life.  But a close second is the cost of hearing aids.

As I've mentioned before, there is a bill before both houses of Congress that would award families a $1,000 tax credit every five years for purchasing two hearing aids.  And now, the Better Hearing Institute has made it very easy for you to contact your elected representatives in Washington and tell them you want them to support the bill.  Just visit their website hearingaidtaxcredit.org and click on "write congress".  The form takes less than one minute to complete.

Oticon Delta on CNN

Continuing my recent theme of posting hearing aid-related YouTube.com videos, my latest discovery is a good friend of mine on CNN discussing the design of Oticon's Delta hearing aid:

By the way, that's his "winter beard".  I always amuse myself by telling him he isn't standing close enough to the razor.

Widex Inteo Video

As I wrote yesterday, the hearing aid industry is starting to market more to consumers than audiologists, which is probably a good thing.  To that end, some advertisement videos are beginning to pop up on YouTube.com and below is an ad for Widex's Inteo hearing aid.

And for the m series, i.e. mini-version:

Phonak Exélia Video

Recently, I've discovered that the hearing aid industry has made YouTube.com part of it's marketing attack, part of their recent strategy to focus more on the consumer than the audiologist, something that makes sense to me.

Below is a video for Phonak's new family of hearing aids, Exélia.

Recommended Viewing

On Sunday, April 20th, CBS in conjunction with Hallmark will broadcast a movie entitled Sweet Nothing in My Ear, which stars Jeff Daniels and Marlee Matlin.  A brief synopsis:

Suppose your deaf child could have an operation (not without risk) that might allow him or her to hear again.

Dan Miller (Daniels) and his wife Laura (Matlin) only want what's best for their happy and healthy eight-year-old son Adam (Noah Valencia) who's been deaf since age four.  Laura opposes the surgery -- an implant.  Being deaf, she doesn't consider it a disability and believes an operation, regardless of the outcome, would make Adam feel that something was wrong with him.  However, Dan, who can hear, misses talking and listening to his son.  For him, an operation is worth the risk, believing Adam's life would be easier and more complete if he could hear.

This is a devoted family facing a moment of truth. Together or apart, Dan and Laura must make a life-altering decision on behalf of their son...

Ever since cochlear implant surgery became prevalent, this very issue of whether or not to implant children has been a source of contention.  Though the movie is a fictional story, thousands of families have had to grapple with this very decision.  It should be an interesting movie and looks to be well-made.

My DVR is set, how about yours?

Ask Congress to Listen Up

Thirty-two million Americans suffer from some degree of hearing loss, roughly one out of every ten.  But few obtain the amplification they need to help their condition.

A large reason for this is the stigma that has been attached to hearing aids, the outdated concept that only the old and the infirm would ever consider using them.  For instance, in countries where hearing aids are routinely covered by insurance, the percentage of hearing impaired individuals using amplification is not that much different than in America.

As hearing aids continue to make great strides in both appearance and effectiveness, this stigma will most likely fade away.  But one issue that will remain will be the cost of hearing aids.  As of 2004, the average cost of a device was over $1,700.

But, help could be on the way.  The U.S. Senate's Finance Committee and the House of Representatives' Ways and Means Committee are considering a set of bills called the Hearing Aid Assistance Tax Credit.  If enacted, the tax code would allow tax credits for individuals or families $500 every five years to purchase hearing aids.

Unfortunately, similar versions of these bills have expired in Congress in the past with little or no attention given to them.  Unless more attention is paid to the current versions, they will likely experience the same fate.

I would encourage you to make your voice heard on this important issue and contact your senators and representatives.  If you're not sure how to do so, visit Congress.org and use the search box on the top left sidebar to get the contact information for your elected officials.  Send them a message and encourage them to consider this important legislation.

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As you may have noticed, in the top of the right-hand sidebar on this site now features a tracking widget for this legislation.  Check back to watch the the bills' progress.

Newborn Hearing Screenings

Several times a week, a mother will bring her toddler into my office for a hearing test.  Typically, the mother, nor I, are expecting to find a hearing loss.  By the same token, extraneous circumstances such as a slight delay in speech development dictate that we make sure.

While gathering a case history, the parents will invariably mention to me that, "He/She passed her hearing screening at birth, but we always wondered, how can they tell?  It's not as if he/she was able to respond at just a few days old!"

It's true, other than a startle reflex to very loud sounds, newborns can't respond to sound in a way that we can detect.  But through the application of signal averaging, we can use objective, non-invasive physiologic measures such as otoacoustic emissions (OAE) and auditory evoked potentials (AEP) to determine with relative certainty whether a newborn -- or any other patient incapable of voluntarily responding to stimuli -- has normal hearing or not.

In the case of OAE's sounds are presented to the newborn's ear and if the cochlea is normal sounds will resonate back out.  We record these resonances and if they are a pitch and intensity (right around 0 dB) we expect, we assume normal hearing is present.

AEP's are used more often for newborn screenings because OAE's require the testing to be performed in a quiet setting, and if you have ever been in a hospital's newborn nursery, you know it is not a quiet place.  AEP's on the other hand can be recorded with a fair amount of ambient noise present.  Headphones and sensors are placed on the newborn and electrical signals are painlessly recorded through the newborn's skin [see below].

While these tests are not meant to be a substitute for a comprehensive audiologic examination, performed in a sound-proof booth with a responsive patient, they are reliable and are very good at identifying patients with greater than a mild hearing loss.

Below is a list of states that require newborn hearing screenings, according to the Centers for Disease Control: