Message from the Editor-in-Chief

Being Part of Something Larger On a personal note, when I entered the field of Audiology in the early 1980s, I was fortunate enough to have my first job at an agency where Audiology was only one component.  There was a hearing aid dispensary, a vocational rehabilitation division for Deaf and hard of hearing people,…

Are All of the Measuring Tools for RIC Receiver Lengths the Same across Manufacturers?

Peter Hutchison, AuD, PhD has created a great chart showing the relative differences for the RIC hearing aid measuring tools from 6 different manufacturers.

My Patient Is Planning To Start A Group Fitness Class Soon And Asked Me About Wearing Hearing Aids To The Gym. Is There Anything I Should Be Considering?

Absolutely! Our studies showed that many adults find hearing aids helpful to hear their classmates and the fitness instructor, but worry about moisture damage and hearing aids falling out.

With the Increase In Measles Cases In Canada, Should Early Hearing Detection and Intervention Programs Include It As A Risk Indicator During Newborn Hearing Screening?

No. Although measles is reoccurring in the general population due to increased non-vaccinated infants, the infections are often not proven during screening.

A Cheat Sheet of What People with Hearing Loss Need from Their Audiologist

You’re a trained hearing care professional – you know this stuff.

But your clients know this stuff too. Eventually, but too many of us have learned it the old-fashioned, trial-and-error way, when we don’t flourish with our first hearing care professionals. (You and your colleagues and staff don’t want to fall into the error category.)

What Should Audiologists Tell Their Clients About Hearing Aids And Reducing Dementia Risk?

Hearing aids are beneficial for improving communication when they are part of comprehensive audiologic rehabilitation (AR) based on a person-centered goal-setting approach. By helping older adults set and achieve their communication goals, audiologists play an important role in promoting healthy aging by supporting them to be physically, mentally, and socially active.

Clinically We Occasionally See 2-Year-Old Children with an Inquiry of Speech Delay and They Want to Verify Normal Hearing Before an SLP Referral. And Sometimes the Child Is Learning Two Languages at the Same Time at Home. If There Is A Speech Delay (Or Concern About A Speech Delay), Should the Parents Be Encouraged To Only Speak One Language at Home, Or Continue With the Two Languages?

Families should be encouraged to continue speaking the two (or more!) languages that they naturally use at home. Multilingualism does not harm children’s language development; it confers many benefits for language learning and connects children with their home cultures. Recommending families to only use English at home is not only ineffective, but it also carries a significant risk of harm.

Doesn’t Putting a Sound Field Amplification System into a Noisy Classroom Just Add to the Overall Sound Level, and Isn’t That a Bad Thing?

There is a lot of research documenting the fact that classroom acoustics are a problem. Noise levels are often high, it’s hard for students to hear, and it’s hard for teachers to make themselves heard and to manage a classroom effectively.

My Patients Almost Never Report Difficulty Hearing Nature Sounds (E.G., Birds, Bubbling Creeks) During Their Initial Consultation. Does This Mean They Can Hear These Sounds Or That These Sounds Aren’t Important To Them?

Every patient is different, of course, but we would be surprised if patients with sensorineural hearing loss readily hear nature sounds such as animal vocalizations (birdsongs, insect stridulations) or geophysical sounds (wind, rain, thunder or stream sounds).

Clinical Audiologists May Find It Confusing When Engineers Talk About Inductors, Resistors, And Capacitors As Simulators Such As “The Earmold Vent Functions As A Capacitor”. Audiologists Really Only Talk About Why A Certain Structure Such As An Earmold Vent Allows For The Reduction Of Low Frequency Sound Energy.

In the real world, motion of molecules is governed by the laws of physics. It just happens that many of those laws are expressed by equations involving complex numbers, which are real and imaginary numbers such as magnitude and phase representations.