It’s all in degrees. Unamplified severe loss is going to be a problem and unamplified mild loss is probably not, but you’re in-between. I had a patient with a loss similar to yours but a bit flatter, and it was absolutely recommended to her by the CI team to continue with amplification up until the point that she either got it or decided she didn’t want it. Average speech is about 45 dB HL, so your auditory system is getting some stimulation below 1kHz without amplification for the left ear, but not much above.
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Thank you very much for helping with my situation. With the sudden drop in hearing over the last year this has moved to an area of focus and I want to learn more about how all this works. And another variable is I don’t even really know why the loss (autoimmune?) or more importantly, is it done changing for a while or still dropping.
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This statement has me curious.
Can the cochlea have partial damage? How would the ENT know this?
Also wondering if that ear has been properly aided for best hearing results. If it hasn’t word understanding can deteriorate.
This is from Audiology, Science to Practice, Second Edition by Steven Kramer. There are a lot of moving parts in the cochlea, and most of us with sensorineural hearing loss have partial damage.
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Thanks. I was thinking about the auditory nerve, my mistake.
Yes. The cochlea is the seashell shaped organ with all the little hairs. Lots of partial damages there for most of us.
So, yes this is the question I’ve been wrestling with. I think I haven’t been my best friend for the bad left ear all these years i did not consistently wear the hearing aid. That was the hassle factor balanced with pretty good right ear hearing. But now with the big drop in left ear hearing I am focused on learning and getting best solution, hence my trial of the Bi-CROS and dual HA solutions. So yes there are calibrated to my particular loss. (if that is what you mean)
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Ok, you have mentioned your worse ear has not been aided off and on for years. Is that correct?
Then when did you start wearing a properly fit hearing aid in that worse ear?
I am asking because if an ear has not been aided and then it is, it will take some time to get that ear back in shape hearing. It just doesn’t happen.
I can say I stopped wearing aids for a couple years and my word understanding fell badly. When I put properly fit aids on after that it took a few months to get the word understanding scores back up some but they never got back to where they were.
I hope that helps you understand a little more about how important it is to wear aids all the time when you have hearing loss.
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I’m with you. I would say Iwore the one HA intermittently from ~2010 to 2020. But probably more in the 2018 range as i upgraded the HA and it helped teaching my very large classes at UArk. Then in 2020 I added the second in my right ear as i would be losing insurance and I thought I might need it. Again, intermittent use (think weeks on weeks off). That cranked up some in 2023 as i noticed a substantial loss during that year; but, I did not notice great improvement so I did not wear consistently. Probably because the prescription was now pretty far off because of the significant loss during that period.
So now, consistent with what you think, I should wear the dual solution for a while to see what happens. There is a financial consideration. I would have to upgrade the cros HA to regular (a grand or so). then if I went back to CROS, well I have no insurance.
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My first answer is yes. I would try to get another opinion on that left ear.
As Neville said, the cross system is giving up on that left ear. And if that’s the case, I would get a cochlear implant evaluation done to see where that stands. If anything that evaluation would educate you about your hearing loss and possibilities.
Do you have an old set of aids you could get programmed? Or at least one for the left to prove out with. No big money spent.
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