Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Audiograms

Here is Nolan's aided audiogram from John Tracy, transposed onto an audiogram with a speech banana. We sort of wondered where /f/ went- I suppose it disappeared because he can't hear it. The magic box shows that the aids aren't meeting DSL targets, either.

Here is his unaided audiogram, with bone conduction scores. Currently, his right ear is testing better than his left. The shaded yellow area represents the air-bone gap, indicating a conductive component to his loss. The frequencies above 2000Hz do not show an air-bone gap, indicating the loss in that region is purely sensorineural.

8 comments:

Melanie said...

Hi Leah-

The AGBell convention is June 29-July 2, 2012. Would be SO fun for all of us to meet! :)

Joey Lynn Resciniti said...

I'm so glad you got this info to bring home to your team.

MB said...

Wow - that aided one is terrible. A testament to your hard work that he's done as well as he has considering those results. Just imagine what a piece of cake things will be in comparison once they are set correctly!

leah said...

We have quite a bit of work cut out for us with figuring out proper aid settings, etc. The first run of the aids (prior to his hearing test at JTC) showed that they were set correctly to DSL targets. Either the aids aren't holding their programming, or the two boxes at JTC differ.... not sure! Of course, the first time they entered BHSC's audiogram and the second time they used JTC's audiogram- so the DSL targets probably shifted. Still, it shows the value in aided audiograms!

Miss Kat's Parents said...

Holy crap, that is terrible! How are you handling it? (I would be sobbing! I can't handle Miss Kat not being MAPed perfectly) What are they going to do?

leah said...

Melissa, I don't know what we'll do. Our first main option is to figure out what the heck is going on. That might be harder than it sounds, lol!

Then we need to either get power hearing aids or seriously ramp up his current ones (they're nearing maximum capacity).

Eventually, we may look to a BAHA, but I don't want to go that route unless we have to. The maintenance sounds a little scary (the screw is through the skin and directly into the skull, so the risk of infection is ever-present). Not to mention the dangers of breaking of a screw in your kid's head when wearing that type of device.

We'll probably opt for higher powered hearing aids as the first course of action- once we figure things out.

spherescamp said...

Hmm...Looking at those audiograms, I think I need to get myself an aided audiogram. I've lately found myself switching listening programs because I can't distinguish anything and think I've switched into the wrong program. Only to find that I'm in the "normal" (read: loudest) program. Methinks mine would look suspiciously similar to Nolan's.

I hope you get things sorted out with the conductive loss. It seems to be a surprisingly difficult thing to figure out. I recently changed ENTs and told the new one about the mixed loss in my left ear and the SNHL in the right. He looked at the audiogram I brought with me and said "There's no conductive loss there. I have no idea what your previous doctor told you".

Glad you had such a great time at John Tracy!

deafdude said...

I see others who have improperly programmed HAs as well. I am not surprised they can't hear well. His aided scores should be 15db or better at every frequency! When I had 100db loss, I was aided to 35db and that was back in 1998!