CEU Courses Text/Transcript

This course explores the impact of Symphonia, a software designed to create immersive soundscapes, on hearing aid users. The study includes a survey of 28 patients, highlighting the software's effectiveness in enhancing patient satisfaction, involvement, and understanding of real-world sounds.

This course describes a RIC hearing aid design that optimizes directional microphone orientation (angles) on the device. The results show improved directionality for speech-in-noise testing compared to traditional RIC designs.

This course provides an overview of the history of Bluetooth and its shortcomings in the hearing space, leading up to Bluetooth LE Audio and Auracast, and outlines the fundamental changes that these new updates to Bluetooth will usher in. The course highlights many important details, such as the timeline of the roll out, the types of use cases that Auracast will enable, and why these updates will help to alleviate the current clinician and patient frustrations with Bluetooth.

A recent report suggests approximately 20% of hearing aid non-owners cite stigma as a barrier to pursuing hearing aids – even when lower cost, direct-to-consumer options are made available to them. This article outlines the underlying causes of stigma, how older adults with hearing loss manage stigma, and how both clinicians through better person-centered communication, and manufacturers through improved product design can more effectively address and overcome the deleterious effects of stigma.

This course dives into the transformative journey of teleaudiology over the past decade, exploring its rapid growth, the impact of mobile health technologies, and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants will gain insights into the current state of teleaudiology, including patient and audiologist perspectives, the challenges and opportunities ahead, and the potential for future innovations in hearing healthcare delivery.

There is an association between hearing loss and cognitive decline, and hearing loss is also a risk factor for dementia. This course reviews the evidence that hearing loss causes dementia and treating hearing loss reduces the risk of dementia.

This course includes short summaries of recent journal articles that have direct clinical applications. Key teaching points are explained. The summaries are from articles spanning five different areas: pre-fitting considerations, pre-fitting testing, features and signal processing, selection and fitting, and verification.

This course describes the origins and current views on the auditory processing disorder (APD) construct. This course includes a discussion of the identification of the “gold” or reference standard test (or test battery) used for the diagnosis of an APD.

This article reviews Medicare coverage policies for audiology services. An overview of health policy statutes related to audiologist participation in the Medicare program are provided.

This article comprehensively examines the intricacies and applications of frequency-lowering technologies in hearing aids. It delves into the various methods of different manufacturers, detailing the technical aspects and potential impacts on speech perception. It emphasizes the need for careful consideration in applying these technologies, tailored to individual needs, and highlights the balance between enhancing audibility and preserving the perceptual distinctions between frequency-lowered speech sounds. The article is a crucial resource for clinicians and researchers, offering insights into optimizing hearing aid performance through frequency-lowering techniques.