Cochlear Implants CEU Courses

Hearing loss in cCMV has unique features, presentation, and long-term outcomes. This presentation highlights these unique features, and outlines the current evidence that guides identification and treatment of patients with this condition.

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.

Not all cochlear implant (CI) patients present in the straightforward way taught in class. Using real case examples, this course provides a differential analysis approach to complex cochlear implant programming cases.

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.

Clinical models of care for adult cochlear implant recipients has changed little since implants were originally cleared by the FDA in the 1980’s. This course will discuss a new patient-centered and streamlined care model for adult cochlear implant patients and we will describe research that supports this new model.

Ongoing research indicates that patient satisfaction and speech perception improve when individualized treatment for hearing loss includes a plan for optimizing acoustic and electric technology when appropriate. This course will review treatment options, best practice guidelines, and current research outcomes in cases where patients experience both acoustic and electric stimulation.