All right everybody...Put your thinking caps on here for me, please. I have a
patient whom I recently fit with an Argosy CIC with a K-amp circuit for his
high frequency hearing loss. The real ear looks ideal! As pretty as you
could possibly achieve. He loves the sound. The fit is comfortable and there
is no feedback problems at all. Sounds ideal, right?
But.....his complaint (and this is an experienced user who by the way is
wearing a linear class D mini canal in his other ear) is that after wearing
the aid for a few hours, his hearing deteriorates to the point that when he
removes the hearing aid, he appears to hear better without it than with it,
but at the same time, he feels that his actual hearing thresholds have
decreased in that time. I had him put a new battery in the aid, insert the
aid first thing in the morning, and come to my office when this phenomenon
occurred.
When he came in, I removed the aid, which was inserted properly, left it
running on my desk and checked his hearing levels. As expected, there was no
change, although he swore to me that it certainly seemed that there was. The
aid was performing exactly to specs with an electroacoustic check. Real ear
was still beautiful.
I know this man personally as well as professionally and know how much he
wants the CICs over anything else. I am out of ideas as to what is causing
this other than adaptation? What about you?
Terri in GA
