Message from the Editor-in-Chief
There were many highlights from last October’s Canadian Academy of Audiology conference in Blue Mountain/Collingwood, Ontario. But, being an ambulance chaser at heart, I sought out the keynote speaker, Nicholas Reed, who gave a fascinating talk on epidemiology and what it tells us about the relationship between cognition and hearing loss. Dr. Nicholas Reed and his colleague Dr. Jennifer Deal were happy to write down some of the points that Nicholas touched upon in our lead-off feature article called “A Field Guide to Interpreting and Discussing the Public Health Landscape on Hearing Loss and Cognition”… or what should we be telling our patients. I must admit to some difficulty following the subtleties of epidemiology- I have an undergraduate in pure mathematics and statistics, and I still can’t figure out how ½ of one standard deviation found in Dr. Frank Lin’s ACHIEVE study is a significant clinical result…. But then again, I am only human and it’s helpful to have a Nicholas Reed and a Jennifer Deal to help us cut through the weeds.
In addition to the many fascinating articles we have compiled in this issue of CanadianAudiologist.ca, we also have 9 columnists writing on all aspects of audiology. Starting with this issue, we have a new column called “Amplification,” coordinated by Calvin Staples. And understandably, this new column is all about … amplification… as well as other things that rear their ugly heads in our clinics. This introductory column is all about the clinical contributions of Dr. Margo Skinner who unfortunately had left us much too early in her life. During Margo’s PhD thesis, she was able to show that “simply” increasing the amount of the high frequency amplification was not sufficient- it may sound clearer, but at the risk of compromising speech quality. Margo showed that for every increase in high-frequency gain, one also needed to increase low-frequency gain. Fitting hearing aids is a balancing act and both “ends” need to be appreciated to optimize a hearing aid fitting in the clinic- regardless of what a fitting formula may suggest.
And it’s not too early to begin planning for our next annual CAA conference in Moncton, New Brunswick from Wednesday October 14 to Saturday October 17- home of the Magnetic Hill! Watch for announcements in your weekly CAA Newsletter.
I wish you all a pleasant early spring and hope that there are no “late spring surprises” of snow.
Marshall Chasin, AuD.,
Editor in Chief