ACIA CEU Courses

In this session, Dr. Dana Suskind discusses how artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other emerging technologies can be used to better understand and, thus, optimize the role that parents play in promoting early language and cognitive development in children with hearing loss and children with typical hearing. Dr. Suskind covers the existing literature on foundational brain development and language skill acquisition, with an emphasis on the crucial role that parents and caregivers play in this process. She also identifies gaps in our collective knowledge on this topic and explains how technology can help fill those gaps. Finally, she shares several examples of tools being developed at the University of Chicago's TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health that will help individual parents boost their children’s foundational development—and also allow society to better support all parents in this essential task.

This course covers best practices for evaluating adult cochlear implant (CI) single-sided deafness (SSD) candidates, including the insurance elements that need to be considered with this population. Additionally, the outcomes and benefits of the technology with this population are discussed.

This course focuses on referral, candidacy, and the evaluation process for cochlear implantation (CI) in children with single-sided deafness (SSD). Expected outcomes and factors that could influence performance in this population are discussed.

This five-course series on adult assessments in hearing health is intended to stimulate collaborative approaches for hearing health professionals, regardless of what hearing technologies they typically provide. Ideally, professionals will support patients in their long-term hearing loss journey, facilitating transitions when appropriate and a comfortable sense of the range of ways hearing loss can be addressed throughout one’s hearing journey.

Advances in various hearing technologies have blurred the lines of rehabilitative candidacy for patients with different degrees of measurable hearing. Thus, the purpose of this course provides an overview of auditory outcomes and evidence-based practices for programming, verifying, and validating various hearing technologies including hearing aids and auditory implants.

Adults with severe-to-profound hearing loss utilizing hearing aids are typically not benefitting sufficiently from traditional amplification and often would benefit from hearing implants. This course will review ways hearing care professionals can support adult patients who may benefit from implants (either now or in the future) by presenting information on the cochlear implant (CI) option early in an individual’s hearing journey. A CI is not a last resort, but rather a means for those who fall within the guidelines to experience hearing improvement, rather than continued decline.

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), and specifically the Cochlear Implant Quality of Life (CIQOL) instrument suite, can enhance patient care from pre-CI evaluations to post-CI monitoring. A thorough review of these outcomes are discussed in this course.

This course will review the multiple roles audiologists and hearing aid dispensers play in the continuity of care for hearing aid users—from screening and referring potential cochlear implant candidates to performing comprehensive cochlear implant evaluations prior to referring candidates to cochlear implant surgical teams. Adults with hearing loss live with a chronic condition that requires hearing services for life. Professionals working with them must be able to provide services and guidance to these patients throughout their lifespan. Depending on their licensure and scope of practice, hearing aid dispensers and audiologists can screen, assess, and counsel their own patients regarding cochlear implants as a treatment option.

As the prevalence of hearing loss increases, so does the complexity of the treatment path that patients with hearing loss experience. As hearing health providers, we all have the responsibility to make sure that the patients who can benefit from cochlear implants have access to them. Whether you're screening a patient for a hearing aid, recommending a cochlear implant evaluation, or activating the device, we all have a role to play in the continuum of care for managing hearing loss. This session focuses on the impact of age on hearing health, multidisciplinary approaches to diagnosis, and how providers are successfully incorporating cochlear implants into their diagnostic and treatment process.

Considerable variation exists across the medical and audiologic communities regarding determination of cochlear implant (CI) candidacy. While criteria exist from the FDA for children and adults and from CMS for Medicare beneficiaries, different clinics and even audiologists within the same clinic use varying protocols to determine CI candidacy in different age groups and also considering factors other than hearing status. To provide guidance on this topic, the ACI Alliance Board of Directors commissioned four papers to provide guidelines for candidacy for children and adults with bilateral hearing loss and those with single-sided deafness. Task forces were appointed to develop the guidelines with membership drawn from across the care continuum to include audiologists, surgeons, speech-language pathologists, and others involved in CI patient care. This course will review each of those four candidacy guidelines.