Can Hard of hearing people get a CI?

set2 said:
Coolgirl, good luck with whatever you decide to do. Have you tried using just the implant when you are in band? If I was as involved in music as you are, I would want to make sure you like the music with just the implant.
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Yes, i have used with just my implant in band. Its been hard because i'm always used to using both my HA and CI in band. But without my aid, i noticed i was relying on my implant more than my right ear now. And i've been doing alot of "whats" "huhs" or "what did you says" since i have lost hearing in that ear. And ever since that happened, alot of people were helping me by signing the directions to me so i know what was going on. And its been a struggle trying to move along into the season with just one ear. I would come home frustrated or mad or upset because i can't hear very well from band. And that i can't notice my mistakes that i've been making in my music when we memorize them. But without the aid in my right, it sounds off balance. But hopefully i would be able to get a CI sooner or later this year.

I have severe hearing loss in both ears. My right ear is HOH, but i lost the amount of hearing left in my right ear due to the loudness from my new hearing aid, which caused it to make my right ear become deaf. Its either that, or Autoimmune hearing loss.
 
deafdyke said:
But MEI is for more traditionally "hoh" (mild to moderately severe) folks who don't benifit from HA, but don't have enough loss to qualify for CI. It sounds like coolgirl's loss in her unimplanted ear would benifit more from CI. (speech comprehension has gone WAY down right?)
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Here is more of an indication range of what is being targeted by the various hearing solutions.

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C1
 
consider getting ci?

im hoh and wearing hearing aid on my right. mute on left. i have been thinking about getting ci and i am not sure what or how ci can benefits for me? i am having hard time understanding when people carry conversations or talk to me in the background. I understand better if signs is being use. i have done my research and i am still not sure if it will be worth it. I want to be able to hear and understand better than what i am now. tread has got my attention about ci and ha and how it effect the hearing and speech. :ty: :)
 
CI is a very simple and effective technology for hearing loss patients. It is for making surgery easy both for patients and surgeon. One can go for this surgery after a consultation with their doctors.

Also one must consider their severity of hearing loss before going for the operation. They can go for hearing test before the surgery. This also enables them to track the improvement after the surgery.

Regards
 
sudden hearing loss

I've always had hearing aids worked very well for me and have 82db. Last month I had a sudden hearing lost and went up to 95db in my right ear. I've never had this happen to me in 26 years. which I'm 26 lol. CT and MRI normal so docs have no idea why this has happened to me. put me on max oral steriods and injected steriods in my ear drum improved a little but not back to my normal. now he wants to do cochlear implants. I'm having a very hard time saying yes to CI. I'm a full time firefighter/medic and work in Children's Hosptial. I don't want to lose what I've had to work so hard for! I've done research and all CI talked about is deaf getting CI. I'M NOT DEAF!!! I still have hearing with aids. should I risk what I still have left in my hearing and just keep trying with more powerful hearing aids which is next week. I'm trying to do everything but CI.
 
kcoreno46 said:
I've always had hearing aids worked very well for me and have 82db. Last month I had a sudden hearing lost and went up to 95db in my right ear. I've never had this happen to me in 26 years. which I'm 26 lol. CT and MRI normal so docs have no idea why this has happened to me. put me on max oral steriods and injected steriods in my ear drum improved a little but not back to my normal. now he wants to do cochlear implants. I'm having a very hard time saying yes to CI. I'm a full time firefighter/medic and work in Children's Hosptial. I don't want to lose what I've had to work so hard for! I've done research and all CI talked about is deaf getting CI. I'M NOT DEAF!!! I still have hearing with aids. should I risk what I still have left in my hearing and just keep trying with more powerful hearing aids which is next week. I'm trying to do everything but CI.
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You are precisely where I was 7 years ago when I was 32 years old. I came to learn some facts about hearing and CIs. First... let me address this old thread topic since it is a real problem around here with too many "experts" running around spreading poor information on what constitutes "hard-of-hearing" and "Deaf." I ran around telling people I was "hard of hearing" when I wore a hearing aid. I heard, after all. I could still hear voices and everything else. I just couldn't hear some high frequencies. I was, in hindsight, deaf. If you are profound in key frequencies that a hearing aid cannot restore to useable levels... you are deaf. Simply being able to hear at all with a hearing aid does not mean you are hard of hearing. Likewise, being able to hear at all with a hearing aid does not constitute not being suitable for a CI.

I know how you feel. I did the whole round of steroids and all. Being told I should consider a Cochlear Implant was upsetting! I wasn't deaf enough! Was I?

At this stage you need to do real research into CIs.... NOT HERE! Not other Deaf sites. Bona fide factual information websites. Cochlearimplanthelp.com is a very comprehensive source for all you need to learn and know, to start.

When you get through this process you are going to laugh at yourself. Getting a CI was one of the best things that ever happened to me. The more you learn the better you'll feel about this.

Oh.. and that "hearing" that I thought I had? It wasn't worth saving and neither is yours if your doctor is recommending it. If you have no value in hearing... by all means decline it! If you love hearing, you'll be amazed at what you gain back with a CI.

Feel free to contact me if you need help/someone to talk to.
 
my husband did lose his residual hearing after he got a CI. He is disappointed but hopefully CI survives for him. whoa CI is pretty expensive! He spend a lot of $ on it. w
 
All depends on the surgeons skills as to whether you loose your residual hearing.
 
I was clearly advised that there is NO residual hearing after a Cochlear Implant operation.
That was 5 1/2 years ago. I became bilateral DEAF December 20, 2006.

Aside my Hearing aid was of NO value at 105 db thus the consideration for the operation.
 
It isn't the surgeons skills that say how much residual hearing you will loose, it depends on the array that is used, as well as your physiology. If they are able to go through the rear window or not. It also depends on if you have much residual hearing to begin with.
 
We were told to expect to lose some dbs in the surgery. But whether bc of surgeon's skill or physiology, my daughter's audiogram showed a minimal change of about 5dbs with her cis turned off, so very little loss if any of "residual hearing." But, we were told she'd probably lose it over the years anyway: she had already had a sudden dip (from ~90 to 100) in some frequencies in the unimplanted ear during the summer before getting her second implant and they said without stimulation of the remaining hair cells, she'd likely move deeper into the profound level than she already was. We haven't done a recent booth test without cis lately, so I don't know if that prediction held.
 
I wouldn't do it with severe to profound loss...it'd have to be when my hearing aids are useless that I would even consider it...even then, I prefer to stick to the hearing aids....

Laura
 
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GrendelQ said:
We were told to expect to lose some dbs in the surgery. But whether bc of surgeon's skill or physiology, my daughter's audiogram showed a minimal change of about 5dbs with her cis turned off, so very little loss if any of "residual hearing." But, we were told she'd probably lose it over the years anyway: she had already had a sudden dip (from ~90 to 100) in some frequencies in the unimplanted ear during the summer before getting her second implant and they said without stimulation of the remaining hair cells, she'd likely move deeper into the profound level than she already was. We haven't done a recent booth test without cis lately, so I don't know if that prediction held.
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Once you get to 95-100dB in the low frequencies what actual residual hearing do you have? Waiting until there is no residual hearing seems strange to me. Maybe, for adults who have a good language base, wait until the useable hearing is minimal.

For me, a change in residual hearing from 105 to 110 dB won't harm me. Or in another way, the benefits I would receive from potentially being able to hear at 15dB (the ideal for CI) or even 30-40dB far outweighs the loss of 5, 10, or even 20 dB of my "residual" hearing.
Right now my unaided detection of sound starts at 85dB in low frequencies and quickly drops off to above 120dB by 2,000Hz. There isn't much useable.
Even with aids that have 85dB of gain I am not hearing sounds of speech. A CI addresses the issues of distortion and recruitment.

The audiologists say that my speech discrimination is "good" with a 40% at 100dB and that is with me guessing at the words because no audi will believe that I know the words on their easy-ass balanced syllabic list. (Baseball, airplane, hotdog...)
I keep asking them to use a harder test since I have a strong auditory background (progressive hearing loss) but they look at my pure tone average and assume I can't "guess" or "infer" the words.
If they used an appropriately difficult test it would be much more informative. If they tested me with nonsense words, I doubt I'd get 20% correct.



Sorry for the rant.
 
Here in the UK they implant the better ear and altho I have a profound loss and can already get implanted, I chosen not too as my speech scores are 4% left (left 120db going upto 110db from 1000htz) and 64% right (120db going to 95db at 1000htz)

I can actaully understand a lot on my right with my Naidas. Can even hear people call me but wouldn't be able to have a conversation with facing people.

As my right speech scores are so good, the CI won't really change anything as with a CI I will properly have roughly the same speech scores.
 
ecp said:
Once you get to 95-100dB in the low frequencies what actual residual hearing do you have? Waiting until there is no residual hearing seems strange to me. Maybe, for adults who have a good language base, wait until the useable hearing is minimal.

For me, a change in residual hearing from 105 to 110 dB won't harm me. Or in another way, the benefits I would receive from potentially being able to hear at 15dB (the ideal for CI) or even 30-40dB far outweighs the loss of 5, 10, or even 20 dB of my "residual" hearing.
Right now my unaided detection of sound starts at 85dB in low frequencies and quickly drops off to above 120dB by 2,000Hz. There isn't much useable.
Even with aids that have 85dB of gain I am not hearing sounds of speech. A CI addresses the issues of distortion and recruitment.

The audiologists say that my speech discrimination is "good" with a 40% at 100dB and that is with me guessing at the words because no audi will believe that I know the words on their easy-ass balanced syllabic list. (Baseball, airplane, hotdog...)
I keep asking them to use a harder test since I have a strong auditory background (progressive hearing loss) but they look at my pure tone average and assume I can't "guess" or "infer" the words.
If they used an appropriately difficult test it would be much more informative. If they tested me with nonsense words, I doubt I'd get 20% correct.



Sorry for the rant.
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agree, with all of that. I've never been given a speech discrimination score on the test where they do the baseball airplane hotdog etc....in my last gearing test though they played a disc and a voice said 'say the word _____" and it would be some one syllable that mostly sounded like aaaaaa or eeeee or iiiiiiii. But even that doesn't seem very fair, because in a normal conversation that one syllable word might just sound like a vowel but within the context of a sentence you'd be able to guess what that word was. My left ear starts at 100, and I got 0% for that ear at 115db, my right starts at 90, and now I can't remember the exact results, but at 110db I got like between 30 and 40% I have a very strong lingual background, I didn't start losing my hearing until I was 20. But obviously what little "hearing" I have left in my left is doing me absolutely no good, why cry about losing something you don't actually have?
 
NaidaUP said:
Here in the UK they implant the better ear and altho I have a profound loss and can already get implanted, I chosen not too as my speech scores are 4% left (left 120db going upto 110db from 1000htz) and 64% right (120db going to 95db at 1000htz)

I can actaully understand a lot on my right with my Naidas. Can even hear people call me but wouldn't be able to have a conversation with facing people.

As my right speech scores are so good, the CI won't really change anything as with a CI I will properly have roughly the same speech scores.
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Nadia,
so even thou you have very poor speech comprehension scores on your left, it still adds a bit to the total comprehension? That's pretty much why I think that while it's awesome that people who have extremely poor response to sound/speech with hearing aids have an option, that it shouldn't always be assumed that CI is better then hearing aids for severe/profound people, or that bilateral CI is better then one CI and a hearing aid.....
 
deafdyke said:
Nadia,
so even thou you have very poor speech comprehension scores on your left, it still adds a bit to the total comprehension? That's pretty much why I think that while it's awesome that people who have extremely poor response to sound/speech with hearing aids have an option, that it shouldn't always be assumed that CI is better then hearing aids for severe/profound people, or that bilateral CI is better then one CI and a hearing aid.....
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But DeafDyke, the tiny bit of gain from the poorer ear when combined with the better ear, when both are candidates for cochlear implants, does not mean that great benefit won't be possible with a cochlear implant.

Cochlear implants aren't the great evil the Deaf community thought they were 15 or 20 years ago. I know several Deaf people who have cochlear implants and who have some benefit from them (though these people were born with profound sensorineural hearing loss).
Other people, such as myself, have been involved with Deaf culture from a young age but were born with some hearing. I am now profoundly Deaf.
I don't like the implication that my decision about my body is judged by people.

I see it as similar to men who are against abortion in every circumstance. These men will never have to face the possibility of abortion but they want to judge women for their choices about their bodies. It seems that some people in the deaf community are extremely against cochlear implants even though they are not candidates/they have conductive hearing loss or are hearing allies of Deaf people.
It is possible to be Deaf AND have or want a cochlear implant.
 
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