Low Frequency Residual Hearing Revisited. Great benefits.

Originally Posted by Hear Again
More gain doesn't always equal greater clarity.

Originally Posted by deafdude1
Of course not, but it still helps by amplification.

What good is amplification if it doesn't provide clarity?
 
Hear Again said:
She gets a CI and the NEXT DAY she is understanding speech better than she ever had before!

faire_jour,

Miss Kat was relying on lipreading to aid in her speech understanding.
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No, she just wasn't understanding, even with lipreading.
 
Hear Again said:
I'm talking about the day after her CI was activated. Miss Kat used lipreading to help her understand speech, no?
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The next day after activation she would turn to me when I called her name.

To this day, I don't know how much she lipreads. She understands me even when she is not looking at me, so it can't be the majority of her understanding. For example, over a month ago (so 3 months post) I was talking on the phone to my husband and Miss Kat was about 6 feet away from me, with her back to me playing with her ponies. My husband asked me what we were doing to day and I responded "We have to go to speech". Miss Kat turned around and signed and said to me "Go speech?". Her back was to me, and she wasn't even paying attention to me and she OVERHEARD!

I have tons of examples like that, so is she lipreading??? I don't know. I don't discourage it (except during AVT) but I can't gauge how much. I can mouth something to her when her CI is off (something really common, like "I love you") and she will say or sign it back. But if someone mouths without speaking when her CI is on, she will get mad (when it is me!)or think it is really funny. She tells me "They didn't voice,they only moved their mouth, (that's) silly!"
 
deafdude1 said:
What about a person who lost most or all their residual hearing? They would still know what sounds were like before the loss, yet experience a huge benefit over HAs which have become nearly useless. If a person is getting moderate benefit from HAs, it makes sense to wait as there will be better technology and his hearing may get worse. Then he will see the huge difference when the time comes. You said your own hearing got worse and this made you decide to go CIs, how much worse did it get?
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Yes, it will benefit them if they had experience with hearing sounds prior. I'm talking about those who had ears that were never exposed to sound.

My right was at 80db or 70db as a child, then as I became an adult it dropped to 88db. Within a few years, it dropped to 94db in the low, and as it hit the 500hz range, it was 105...so it just got pretty bad. I knew that eventually I will lose a lot more in a few years due to age and cause of my hearing loss (to this day, I have no idea what caused it. It is possible that it's genetic because my half brother is deaf, but not my older brother). My left was from 85db to 90db as a child, then dropped to 95db as an adult. Now, 105db. So yeah...
 
faire_jour said:
No, she just wasn't understanding, even with lipreading.
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It takes time to train how to lipread if she was relaying on her residual hearing. It also takes time to train your brain to understand speech when you hear differently. My own audiologist warned me that I must be patient and spend months training my ears and brain with those new Phonak Naida HAs. I did see a big improvement out of the box already and training only added upon the improvement.

faire_jour said:
The next day after activation she would turn to me when I called her name.
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Ive always responded when my name was called, I still remember those times when I was little. In a way, I am glad CI technology was not FDA approved nor widely used back when I was little because I was getting plenty of benefits from HAs. When/if I ever have children, I am not forcing CI on them unless they have a very profound hearing loss and don't respond to even environmental sounds with the best HAs.

HAs work great for me so I believe HAs will work great when/if I ever have children. I am not keen on the risks of surgery and many other other risks. I will let the children make the choice themselves as adults after they are fully informed of the pros, cons and risks. Hearing people have no idea what it's like to be deaf(or HOH) but I say it's not as bad as it seems. I sometimes wish I was hearing for the convinence but my life can still be good the way I am.

LadySekhmet said:
My right was at 80db or 70db as a child, then as I became an adult it dropped to 88db. Within a few years, it dropped to 94db in the low, and as it hit the 500hz range, it was 105...so it just got pretty bad. I knew that eventually I will lose a lot more in a few years due to age and cause of my hearing loss (to this day, I have no idea what caused it. It is possible that it's genetic because my half brother is deaf, but not my older brother). My left was from 85db to 90db as a child, then dropped to 95db as an adult. Now, 105db. So yeah...
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If you had over 90db loss at 250Hz, your hearing loss was no less than profound. Were both of your ears equally bad? Mine's labled as severe-profound. Very big difference between 75db(my home test says 72db) and 95db. If I lost 20db of hearing, I would be visiting a CI center to get evaluated and if im a candidate and not at high risk for the surgery, id go ahead. You said somewhere you were hearing an average of 60db aided, I would never accept 60db and while I probably won't get the 15db you get with CI(well my audie does believe ill get that with HAs for the low frequencies), the odds of me getting better than 60db with CI is greater than 95%.
 
Deafdude1,

I have a question. Have you asked your audiologist if you are even a candidate for the CI? If s/he said no, then doesn't that show to you that maybe they AREN'T being lax? I know you have "a friend" with similar loss who is getting a CI, however I noticed that you said something like "He has 60dB loss at 250Hz", implying that's all the information you need to know that your friend could have gotten benefits from HAs. I love math, but saying 60dB with a 40dB gain will give you 20db isn't that simple. Have you even asked your audiologist if your "HA math" is even right?

PS, Food for thought, if a HA gives you 40dB gain, will it also give another person with the same loss 40dB gain?
 
Daredevel7 said:
Deafdude1,

I have a question. Have you asked your audiologist if you are even a candidate for the CI? If s/he said no, then doesn't that show to you that maybe they AREN'T being lax? I know you have "a friend" with similar loss who is getting a CI, however I noticed that you said something like "He has 60dB loss at 250Hz", implying that's all the information you need to know that your friend could have gotten benefits from HAs. I love math, but saying 60dB with a 40dB gain will give you 20db isn't that simple. Have you even asked your audiologist if your "HA math" is even right?
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Actually, he suggested I get a CI after testing my unaided hearing and before selling me those Phonak Naida V UP HAs. He honestly had no idea how powerful those HAs were as I was the first person he fitted those HAs on. He wasn't even sure if I would benefit from those new HAs but he suggested I try them which I gladly did. They made a huge difference and so many sounds were popping up that I never heard before! I would tell dad "omg what was that sound I just heard" and he would laugh and say that's the A/C or the fan or whatever. I would almost jump when I heard a strange, new sound! Dad would smile and laugh and say those new HAs are amazing! I didn't notice any real difference in the higher frequencies since my loss was very profound(110db and worse) above 1000Hz but it made a huge difference in the lows! In fact, even my ability to understand speech improved!

After he saw how well I was hearing, he retracted his CI recommendation the next day. He now knows that the Phonak Naida V UP HAs are the best and most powerful and can now benefit people with greater losses than any other HA in the past. He says HA technology is amazing! But he did tell me that once your HL gets to 120+ db, no HA in the world will ever help(many good reasons why not which I understand them). I also read on the internet that very profound HL is 110db and up and HAs quickly become less efficient starting at 110db and cease to be useful starting at 120db. This also explains why very few audiometers are capable to test above 120db. When I asked my audiologist this, he pointed out the all the obvious such as the pain threshold being 120db and also SPL levels above 120db having the potental to damage/destroy the rest of your remaining residual hearing. Also that HAs don't have enough gain and SPL to be useful. He did say there's a few that test to 130db(I found a couple such audiometers on Google) and possibly even 135db and even 140db! Those super audiometers are used by specially trained audiologists for specialized, specific tests. He didn't have the time to explain everything but just said normally a NR at 120db means 100% hearing loss at a given frequency.

He also emailed me later saying none of today's CI technology will be better than my HAs unless I lose more hearing or wait for better CI technology. You mentioned you had 100db HL, was that at 250Hz sloping downwards? What was the highest frequency you still registered a response? I am not surprised why CIs benefit you so much if your hearing was really that much worse than mine. If you have any audiograms, I can do the math to explain objectively what % improvement CIs were able to achieve. :wave:

Daredevel7 said:
PS, Food for thought, if a HA gives you 40dB gain, will it also give another person with the same loss 40dB gain?
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Nope and this has to do with the dimensions of the ear canal. This is why my audiologist is being realistic in saying I shouldn't expect better than 15db aided hearing. My math says I could theoratically achieve at least 10db aided at 250Hz. In my sig, the aided test I got places my HA gains at only 10db shy of max gains. I am having my HAs reprogrammed and will find out if he was able to get the gains any higher or if I am limited due to the dimensions of my ear canal and mold. I know I can get more low frequency gains, it's confirmed they aren't maxed. Most environmental sounds and speech occur in the low frequencies so I still stand to benefit. You can read the article in my first post that explains why.
 
My audiologist is reprogramming my HAs to get me normal low frequency hearing and near normal mid frequency hearing. He will attempt to get transposition working so I "hear" high frequencies. Once he's done, he believes I can achieve a high percent of speech reception. How well did your audiologist program your HAs?
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You are NOT going to get to normal hearing levels or even CLOSE to 0 dB. I'm late deafened which means I know what everything sounds like and I CANNOT even get that low. And my hearing is better than yours, so if I can't get that how the heck do you think you will!? High percent of speech reception is fine and great if you're hearing the words correctly and CLEARLY. I have 95% speech reception in both ears at 90dB that being said that's in a booth. It's a different story when you factor in noise, sentences, etc. If I do sentences that speech reception goes way down cuz I pick up only a few words. That being said my audiologist has programmed my hearing aids VERY WELL. I've gone through 3 different audis and she's awesome! She's worked with kids to seniors and she has ALOT of experience. She's actually from NY. She's fluent in ASL and isn't one of those audi's that doesn't get Deaf culture. From what I've heard about your audi tho, he seems to blowing smoke up ur u know what because you are not going to get down close to 0 dB with hearing aids when I can't even do that and I know how whispering and such is spose to sound. I used to be able to hear grass make noise when it was barely windy, when i was hearing. You expect to hear that with hearing aids and your loss?! Be realistic.
 
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