Case 1.

E.O. is a 72 year old male with history of noise exposure occupationally.  He is retired from the police force.  He has high cholesterol and has had one heart attack.  He is diabetic.

He reports some loss of sensation in his hands and feet.  His nearsight vision is poor without glasses, and his wife teases that he can never remember where he has put his glasses in the house.

He has never worn a hearing aid.

His primary difficulty is in hearing his wife in the car. They travel by road frequently, in his truck, pulling a recreational vehicle.  This is the chief problem that E.O. will readily admit to, but when administered the Hearing Handicap Inventory, he admits to problems in other situations as well.  His COSI top three listening situation problems are the afore mentioned car, hearing in restaurants, and hearing others who are speaking from a distance.

He is willing to “try” amplification.  When asked “Would you rather have a hearing aid that functions really well, but has lots of controls that let you adjust how the device works, or something that is all automatic, but sometimes doesn’t adjust things perfectly” he clearly opts for automatic. He doubts his ability to adjust the device.    You had noted that his cell phone is a simple, older model.

Case 2

L.M. is a 38 year old female with onset of hearing loss six years ago, possible related to autoimmune disease.  Her current hearing aids are 2.5 years old, and were state of the art at that time.  She is interested in obtaining new technology.

She is the mother of two children, age 4 and 9.  She is dissatisfied with the performance of her current aids in hearing the youngest child at a distance. She is employed – an executive at a local TV station.  She is only moderately satisfied with her current aid’s ability to integrate with her cell phone.  She reports that the aids work reasonably well otherwise.  Her current aids require some “work” on her part to switch to different wireless devices, but her goal is performance, not just ease of use.  She gives no signs of being price sensitive.

E.O. and L.M. have fairly similar audiograms and word recognition performance (see below) and could be fit with the same technology, but they have different capabilities and needs.

• Discuss the options you would present to each patient in terms of –
•        Device style
•        Level of technology, and the cost and value of the features
•        Integration of other wireless communication (e.g. phone or remote microphone)

E.O.

NU-6 ½ lists

L.M.

NU-6 ½ lists