What I do
Hearing & Tinnitus Assessments
*Hearing Assessments are very straightforward, as well as painless and non-invasive. Here’s what to expect.
- I’ll take a brief hearing history to see what may be behind potential hearing loss and the impact this may be having on your lifestyle and relationships.
- I’ll inspect the ear canal with a light called an otoscope. This is to check for physical problems that block the passage of sounds, such as earwax buildup or polyps.
- I’ll then assess your hearing in a variety of ways so I can identify the root cause of any issues. Hearing tests include:
- Pure-tone audiometry: For this test, a variety of sounds of different pitches and volumes are played into headphones. You press a button each time you hear the sound. This allows me to chart what you can and can’t hear.
- Speech recognition: Speech recognition tests your ability to distinguish speech, but without the presence of visual clues like lip movements or facial expressions. During this test you are played speech through the headphones.
- Bone conduction assessment: This painless test measures how well sound conducted through your bone is detected by the inner ear. It also tests the efficiency of the latter plus the hearing nerves. It involves a small vibrating probe being placed against your skull, just behind the ear.
- Each assessment plays an important role in diagnosing hearing loss and the impact it may be having on your life. If we do find there’s weakness in your hearing ability, we may conduct a hearing device demonstration and possibly a hearing device fitting. For this purpose, it can be helpful if you are able to attend your appointment with some.
Hearing Device Fitting
I am an Adult Hearing device specialist. it’s a subspecialty within Audiology that I’ve focused my whole career on because it allows me to have a profound impact on the wellbeing of my patients and the relationships with the people they most care about.
Whilst positive results occur quite quickly in many cases with most people receiving treatment at their first appointment, for most, it is an adaptive process with a substantial acclimatisation period. In light of the neurological processes at play, maximum benefit can’t be expected until around 3 months of full-time hearing device use.
I really do wish our ears were like car parts. That the worn and torn parts could be replaced with new ones and, just like that, we’re hearing better again. Problem is, it’s not that simple, our brains are far more complex. We’re dealing with a progressive, degenerative disorder with neurological involvement. An adaptive process is needed to progressively acclimatise to renewed and more appropriate levels of stimulation.
Further, your brain needs time to relearn which sounds to filter out and which sounds to focus on. At home you’re likely not to notice a ticking clock, or refrigerator noise as they are there all the time and your brain learns to filter them out. The same thing will happen over time with full time hearing device use, leading to progressively improved filtration of unwanted background noise.
I’ve found that the probability for success climbs exponentially following the first month of full time use as everything becomes progressively more natural as your physiology adapts.
Though I’ve never had to do act on it, I offer a 100% money back satisfaction guarantee at 3 months. Whist you can expect improvements straight away, it’s just not realistic to expect maximal outcomes within this timeframe. Together with full time use and today’s technology, your probability of overcoming the challenges that brought you into the practice couldn’t be better.
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