Candidacy for CI

My CI centre only implants children and adults with severe-profound bilateral loss or sudden hearing loss
 
I'll have to ask my audi if my CI center only implants adults and children with bilateral severe-profound hearing loss. I do know that they only implant 7 people/year even though they are the largest CI center in the Midwest.
 
faire_jour said:
AVT would be nearly impossible with a severe-profoundly deaf hearing aid user. It would be cruel for a child. How can you learn to listen when you can't hear?
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I had AVT when I was a child until middle school...unless if it's different to what AVT is actually all about. I basically had speech classes. I learned how to speak properly, I learned how to listen to certain sounds (ahh, oooh, eee), etc. Not every child goes through that. Only certain ones...now that i think about it, those are the ones that have better success with hearing aids and have the ability to speak better. There are some children that I know would not benefit speech classes because they don't wear hearing aids and the ability to speak well.

Is that AVT or Speech classes?
 
Hear Again said:
Despite what those qualifications say, CI candidacy criteria vary from one CI center to another. I know some CI recipients who had severe-profound hearing loss and were denied candidacy because the CI center they were evaluated at only implants those who have profound hearing loss.
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I totally agree. I went to a CI audiologist. Within 5 minutes of speaking with her, she says I automatically qualified...JUST BECAUSE I CAN SPEAK WELL. WTF? This was BEFORE I was even tested!

I had to seek out another audiologist because I had NO clue what CI is about, and I wanted to be SURE that the CI will be beneficial for me, not because I can speak well. After several listening tests, I was proven that I could qualify. I was actually very surprised at the poor sentence discrimination scores I had! I *thought* I could hear well with my HA, but there is a big difference having the visual clues in front of me than nothing.

The first place is not a CI center, but an audiologist that deals with a variety of cases. The second one focus on just one CI brand, hence why I didn't really have to decide between AB or Cochlear. The one I go to in Vegas is a CI center, although the surgeons are in various places in Vegas. All three places implant many children and adults throughout the year. I wonder if it's because of population issues. The one in Vegas - there is a lot of foreign children implanted because the parents have no idea what is Deaf culture is. That's a whole other story...
 
I *thought* I could hear well with my HA, but there is a big difference having the visual clues in front of me than nothing.

This is exactly why my former CI audi and CI surgeon thought I could benefit from an implant. Since I'm totally blind and can't lipread, they agreed that a CI would be beneficial to me. They were right. Communication is *so* much easier now that I have CIs and if I had to do it all over again, I would in a heartbeat.

As far as your CI center is concerned, I think it may have to do with the size of Las Vegas as opposed to Milwaukee. Milwaukee is a much smaller city in comparison which is probably why my CI center only implants 7 people/year. They may also be more selective as to who they deem a CI candidate -- I don't know. I was the first deafblind person to be implanted at my CI center which surprised me given how many people have combined vision and hearing loss. They may not be totally deafblind like I am, but they have some degree of residual vision and/or hearing.
 
LadySekhmet said:
I had AVT when I was a child until middle school...unless if it's different to what AVT is actually all about. I basically had speech classes. I learned how to speak properly, I learned how to listen to certain sounds (ahh, oooh, eee), etc. Not every child goes through that. Only certain ones...now that i think about it, those are the ones that have better success with hearing aids and have the ability to speak better. There are some children that I know would not benefit speech classes because they don't wear hearing aids and the ability to speak well.

Is that AVT or Speech classes?
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AVT is about learning to listen. You are not taught to speak, because if you can hear, you will naturally learn to speak. The principle is that if a child hear and understands the word baby, she will use the word.

In therapy they play games and discuss things. For example a few week ago in my daughter's therapy session they read the book "Brown Bear Brown Bear". The therapist would say "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see? I see a purple horse looking at me" and then Miss Kat would pick up her paper horse and say "purple!". Then she would color the horse purple and ask the therapist for a popsicle stick and the glue "I want glue please" and then they would do the next page. "Purple horse, purple horse....".

The entire time the therapist is sitting next to my daughter so that she is near her implant and not across the table, so that she can't lipread but is hearing instead.

That is AVT.
 
But they they are learning to speak the way a hearing child doea. First they hear and understand and then they speak.
 
faire_jour said:
But they they are learning to speak the way a hearing child doea. First they hear and understand and then they speak.
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Not in all cases. If a child doesn't have enough hearing to understand what they are hearing, they need to be taught how to speak correctly which is where tactile instruction comes in addition to auditory instruction.
 
Hear Again said:
Not in all cases. If a child doesn't have enough hearing to understand what they are hearing, they need to be taught how to speak correctly which is where tactile instruction comes in addition to auditory instruction.
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I know it is not always that way, but that is the way AV is supposed to work.
 
Hear Again said:
If that's true, why do they call it Auditory Verbal Therapy? Why not just call it Auditory Therapy?
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It is because the other philosophy is called Auditory Oral. It is not just a therapy, it is an educational and communication philosophy.
 
faire_jour said:
It is because the other philosophy is called Auditory Oral. It is not just a therapy, it is an educational and communication philosophy.
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I'm not arguing whether or not AVT is an educational and communication philosophy. What I'm saying is that verbal skills are also taught as a part of AVT. Hence, the word "verbal."
 
Hear Again said:
I'm not arguing whether or not AVT is an educational and communication philosophy. What I'm saying is that verbals skills are also taught as a part of AVT. Hence, the word "verbal."
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And I'm telling you that all I have been told and taught by my daughter's therapists says otherwise. They say that they do NOT focus on what is coming out of the mouth, but what is going in the ears. If the child hears properly, they will speak well.

If you start working on "puh, buh" you aren't doing AVT anymore.
 
faire_jour said:
And I'm telling you that all I have been told and taught by my daughter's therapists says otherwise. They say that they do NOT focus on what is coming out of the mouth, but what is going in the ears. If the child hears properly, they will speak well.

If you start working on "puh, buh" you aren't doing AVT anymore.
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Then your AVT therapist has a different focus on therapy than other AVT therapists do.

If you focus on speech sounds, you ARE focusing on speech. How else is a child supposed to understand what he hears if he doesn't understand the components of speech?

By the way, not all children automatically start speaking when they hear. If they did, they would be pronouncing every word with the same
distortion they get through their CI or HA.

When a deaf child puts a CI on, they do not magically turn into a hearing child.
 
faire_jour,

It is also part of the philosophy to cover your mouth when talking to a deaf child who is receiving AVT.
 
Hear Again said:
Then your AVT therapist has a different focus on therapy than other AVT therapists do.

If you focus on speech sounds, you ARE focusing on speech. How else is a child supposed to understand what he hears if he doesn't understand the components of speech?

By the way, not all children automatically start speaking when they hear. If they did, they would be pronouncing every word with the same
distortion they get through their CI or HA.

When a deaf child puts a CI on, they do not magically turn into a hearing child.
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That needs to be emphasized. I am glad you spoke up about it.
 
Hear Again said:
faire_jour,

It is also part of the philosophy to cover your mouth when talking to a deaf child who is receiving AVT.
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And I know how it feels if people even look away while speaking.

That kind of treatment prolonged would make me suicidal.
 
Hear Again said:
Then your AVT therapist has a different focus on therapy than other AVT therapists do.

If you focus on speech sounds, you ARE focusing on speech. How else is a child supposed to understand what he hears if he doesn't understand the components of speech?

By the way, not all children automatically start speaking when they hear. If they did, they would be pronouncing every word with the same
distortion they get through their CI or HA.

When a deaf child puts a CI on, they do not magically turn into a hearing child.
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Again, I completely disagree with part of this. We do NOT focus on speech sounds.
Therapy look like playing games. It is just feeding language into the child. There is no "focus on speech sounds" in AVT.
It is more like "Wow, that is a cat. What does a cat say? Meow. I like cat's. Which is your favorite animal?"
Child says "Dog".
"Oh? I like dogs too. Dogs say woof woof. I have a dog. My dog is black. Do you have a dog?"
Child says "Yes".
"Really? What color is your dog?" And so on.
 
Hear Again said:
faire_jour,

It is also part of the philosophy to cover your mouth when talking to a deaf child who is receiving AVT.
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It is called the hand cue. It is to tell the child they need to listen. And yes, it does prevent lipreading, which is part of the philosophy.
 
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