November 30, 2007

This was the last week of clinic. I saw a few clients. One client I saw wanted his hearing re-evaluated because he had been in a car accident and thought his hearing had changed. He also wanted us to look as his hearing aids because they were not functioning properly. His hearing had changed a good bit. When we looked in his hearing aids, we saw that the one wax spring had been pushed completely down into the hearing aid and was lying on the receiver. We were not able to get it back out of the aid. Both hearing aids did not sound too good, and since they were 5 yrs old, we told him it would probably cost more to have them repaired than to just get new ones.

Since I didn't see anything too exciting, I wanted to find an article that was interesting. I found an article about hearing aids and the brain and the connection between the two. In the article, the researchers completed several experiments to see how amplified sounds are represented in the central auditory system. They expected to find that when sound is amplified by a hearing aid the neural response patterns would have been larger in amplitude and shorter in latency when compared with unaided neural responses; however, this was not the case. The article was very interesting and I highly suggested everyone takes a second to look over it.

Reference:
Billings, C.J., & Tremblay, K.L., (2007). Hearing aids and the brain: What's the connection? The ASHA Leader, (12(7), 5, 23.

If you would like to read this article, please copy the following link:
http://www.asha.org/about/publications/leader-online/archives/2007/070529/070529g.htm

November 15, 2007

This week I saw mostly hearing conservation clients. I was able to see the client I have been following all semester. He came in to pick up his hearing aids that were "broke". They weren't really broke, we just didn't know to put the retention pin in place! Anyways, since I didn't see anything too exciting, I started looking for an interesting article.

The article I found discussed the lack of right ear advantage in patients with ADHD. Some of the hearing related symptoms of ADHD include failing to give close attention to details, does not seem to listen when spoke to directly, and does not follow through on instructions. In this study, they compared a normal control group to the patients with ADHD. They found that most of the normal group had a right ear advantage, defined as a stronger average amplitude of OAE fro the RE than the LE. Most of the patients with ADHD lacked the right ear advantage. The group with ADHD had stronger emissions from the left ear. I thought this was a pretty interesting study since we hear so much about right ear advantage, but as seen with this group, that is not always the case.

Reference:
Combs, J.T. (2002). Lack of right ear advantage in patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Clinical Pediatrics (41) 231-234.

If you would like to read this article, please use the following link:

http://cpj.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/41/4/231?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=1&andorexacttitle=and&titleabstract=right+ear+advantage&andorexacttitleabs=and&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&fdate=1/1/2002&tdate=11/30/2007&resourcetype=HWCIT

November 9, 2007

This week I didn't see too many exciting things. I did have a little boy who came down as part of a speech diagnostic. He was very active and wanted to know what everything was in the clinic. We had a very difficult time keeping him on task. The child would not let me look in his ears, he said it tickled. I wasn't able to use pure tones with the child, but we were able to use speech by having the child to point to his nose and hair.

Since this was my first time testing a who was not really cooperative. I wanted to find an article that went along with testing children like this little boy, so I found an article about the auditory preferences of toddlers and children with autism spectrum disorders. The authors of this article wanted to see how children in these different groups attended to speech stimuli. The results from this study showed that children with ASD had a reduced preference for child directed speech when compared to their age matched peers. From their results they concluded that children with ASD perform differently when compared to their normal age match peers.

Reference:
Paul, R., Chawarska, K., Fowler, C., Cicchetti, D., & Volkmar, F. (2007). Listen my children and you shall hear: Auditory preferences in toddlers with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research 50 (5) 1350-1354.

If you would like to read this article:
http://jslhr.asha.org/cgi/reprint/50/5/1350?maxtoshow=

November 2, 2007

This week I saw several clients. One of which was a printing services employee. While looking back through her chart, I noticed an ABR had been performed on her here at the clinic a number of years ago. We do not routinely perform ABR's, so I thought that was interesting that we had a record of performing one. Apparently, the equipment was new at the time, therefore they were practicing using it. I also got to follow up with a client who came for his initial visit at the beginning of the semester. He came in to pick up his new hearing aids and seemed pleased with them. We did not make any adjustments at that time. He was scheduled for a follow-up appointment in 2 weeks.

So since I saw the ABR testing in the one client's chart, I thought it would be interesting to find an article about ABR's. I found an article comparing the effects of broadband masking noise on the auditory brainstem response in young and older adults. The researchers were wanting to determine the effects of ipsilateral-direct, continuous, broadband noise on ABR wave I and V latencies and amplitude in young adult versus older adult humans. They thought that age may influence the effects of masking noise on ABR peak latencies and or amplitudes. The younger adults had hearing thresholds within normal limits, while some of the older adults had hearing thresholds within normal limits, but some had thresholds up to 45 dB HL. The results from this study found that peak amplituded decreased with increasing noise level and mean amplitudes were smaller for the older group. They also found that the effects of ipsilateral-direct masking noise on the click-evoked ABR were similar for the young and older adults.

Reference:
Burkard, R.F. and Sims, D. (2002). A comparison of the effects of broadband masking noise on the auditory brainstem response in young and older adults. American Journal of Audiology (11) 13-22.

If you would like to read this article, please use the following link:
http://aja.asha.org/cgi/reprint/11/1/13?maxtoshow=