July 26, 2007

Today is my last day of summer clinic and no clients were scheduled. Since I figured it would be slow today, I went ahead and found an interesting article to share. The article was titled Speech Perception by Students With Cochlear Implants Using Sound-Field Systems in Classrooms.
The researcher in this article wanted to measure and compare the efficacy of desktop and wall-mounted sound-field systems in acoustically poor and acoustically ideal classroom settings. The article stated that sound-field systems are used by 80% of students with cochlear implants. Typically in classrooms there is a poor signal to noise ratio, high levels of background noise, and long reverberation times. The study wanted to address three questions:
1. Does either sound-field system improve speech perception in a classroom setting?
2. Is one system better than the other in either acoustically poor or ideal classrooms?
3. Does either system help overcome noise and reverberation in an acoustically poor classroom, or do these acoustic variables remain a significant impediment to speech perception?
As described in the study, there were significant classroom effects, meaning the children performed better in the acoustically ideal classroom. Also, the sound field application showed an effect since the children, especially in the acoustically poor classroom, performed much better with the introduction of the sound-field. The study also showed that the children performed best when the sound-field system was in place on their desk and poorest without any sound-field system. So through this study, the researcher was able to aswer his inital questions and determine that sound-field systems do help students with cochlear implants, the desktop system helped the student much more in an acoustically poor listening environment, and a combination of a sound-field system and a good listening environment help speech perception.
I thought this study was interesting because we need to remember that the listening environments of our clients play a big role in how they are hearing and understanding.

Reference:
Inglehart, F. (2004). Speech perception by students with cochlear implants using sound-field systems in classrooms. American Journal of Audiology, 49, 62-72.
If you would like to check your this article....
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=15248805&dopt=Abstract

July 19, 2007

I think I am bad luck for the clinic. Everytime I am in there we only have one client or no one shows at all. So since I didn't see anyone, I will continue to share interesting articles I have come across. This week's article is from the most recent ASHA Leader.

The article was title Otoacoustic Emissions: Reducing and Preventing Noise-Induced Hearing Loss. I thought the article was interesting because the authors were discussing utilizing OAEs in Hearing Conservation Programs. The authors discussed that the OAEs would not be able to completely replace audiometric testing, but they can help to distinguish ears with normal hearing from those with different degrees of hearing loss. The authors explained that OAEs can help to determined a permanent hearing threshold shift, but since a Noise Induced Hearing Loss is typically slowly progressing, it may take too long to gather the information needed to determine if the employee has a hearing loss.
The authors stated that in order to utilize OAE results in a Hearing Conservation Program, they would need to conduct testing to compare individuals without a hearing loss (a control group) and those with NIHL. They also stated another drawback to using OAEs is that they tend to decrease with aging, so it would be difficult to determine if the low level OAEs are a result from aging or noise exposure. As the authors stated OAEs may greatly help in identifying Hearing Conservation Personnel with a NIHL, but more research into this area is needed.

Reference:
Marshall, L., and Miller, J.A.L. (2007). Otoacoustic emissions: reducing and preventing noise-induced hearing loss. The ASHA Leader, 12(9), 8-11.

July 12, 2007

I did not see any clients or kindergarten re-screens this week. So I decided to look up some information on tinnitus. I have read this article before, and thought it was interesting enough to share with everyone.

In the article, the researchers hypothesized that persons with tinnitus would have more difficulty attending to more demanding and unfamiliar tasks than the control group. They used subjects who described their tinnitus as chronic or moderate and were matched to the control group by age, education and IQ. Through the course of different tasks, it was determined that the tinnitus groups' reading span was significantly shorter than that of the control group. The group with tinnitus also showed a slower reaction time and more difficulty performing demanding tasks. I thought this article was worth sharing since we will have clients' with tinnitus and we need to understand just how it is affecting their lives.

Reference:

Rossiter, S., Stevens, C., and Walker, G. (2006). Tinnitus and its effect on working memory and attention. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49, 150-160.

July 5, 2007

Unfortunately, during clinic on Tuesday, no clients were scheduled. Thursday only had one re-screen. The little boy I re-screened did not pass his original kindergarten screening, but he did pass the evaluation at the clinic.
Since I did not really see anything too exciting in clinic, I thought I would just write about a recent article I saw in the ASHA Leader. By this point we all know about Universal Newborn Hearing Screenings. The article was about the lack of intervention for children who have a confirmed hearing loss. As stated in the article, currently there is a 95% screening rate for newborns, but the U.S. Surgeon General wants this rate even higher. The article presented some alarming statistics. The author discussed that 34% of the babies who did not pass their initial hearing screening never received a confirmation of the diagnosis after that initial screening. It was also stated that 23% of those who had a confirmed diagnosis were not referred to early intervention services. The article stated that 40 states have EDHI laws and 5 have established voluntary screening programs. I thought this article was pretty interesting. I was really shocked to see how few newborns are referred to early intervention services. I don't know where the fault lies for that, but we definitely need to make sure we are doing everything we can to help these families find the services they need.

Reference:

Shafer, D.N. (2007, June19). Infant screening gains media spotlight. The ASHA Leader, 12(8), 1, 7.