Aural Rehabilitation
Aural Rehabilitation services include a wide variety of things that
help people cope with hearing loss. In most other situations in which a
person loses some important function, rehabilitation is included as a
standard part of treatment. Can you imagine, for example, having knee
replacement surgery without having rehabilitation services to help you
cope with your new knee.
Yet the vast majority of people with hearing loss are never offered
aural rehabilitation, and many of them don't even know what the term
means. We think that's a stinging indictment of our hearing loss
professionals.
As agencies spring up to serve hard of hearing and late-deafened
people, we're starting to see these services become more common. But
we've only just begun!
January 2007 - Here's Mark Ross with his
discussion of the recent "State of the Science on Aural
Rehabilitation" conference.
November 2007 -
Auditory Rehabilitation and the Aging Brain
February 2008 -
Straight Talk
from an Audiologist
March 2008 - Ida Institute
Sets Sights on Easing Patient Journey to Better Healing
June 2008 - Tips for Hearing in Noise
June 2008 -
HLAA Convention: Is group audiological rehabilitation worth the time,
cost, and effort?
July 2008 -
The Economics of Computer-Based Auditory
Training~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
November 2007
The speech understanding difficulties expressed by
older adults likely arise from multiple sources. From the ear to the
brain, numerous structural and chemical changes coincide with advancing
age (for a review, see Willott, 1991; 1999). Not only can these changes
negatively impact the audibility of sound, physiological changes
throughout the auditory system also affect the way frequency and timing
information (in the incoming signal) is encoded and perceived (for a
review see Chisolm, Willott, & Lister, 2003). Some higher-level cognitive
functions, such as attention and memory, also may decline with age.
Because perception depends upon lower-level sensory as well as
higher-level cognitive processes, it is likely that decreased audibility,
slowed neural conduction time, and a struggle to selectively attend to a
voice in the presence of competing noise all occur when an older listener
tries to understand what is being said (for a review see Pichora-Fuller,
Schneider, Benson, Hamstra, & Storzer, 2006). It therefore follows that
rehabilitation of the older patient involves more than improving sound
audibility, because for many people detecting, discriminating, and
attending to the signal of interest might be compromised.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
July 2008
Most audiologists agree that fitting hearing aids
is just the initial step in the treatment of acquired hearing loss in
adults, as there is evidence of the effectiveness of aural rehabilitation
to improve long-term benefit from amplification (Sweetow & Palmer, 2005;
Hawkins, 2005; Sweetow & Sabes, 2006). Some such evidence includes
published reports suggesting that return for credit rates for participants
in group aural rehabilitation (AR) classes is p to three times less than
for patients who opt not to participate in group AR (Northern & Beyer,
1999). Few audiologists offer any type of aural rehabilitation or auditory
training in their daily clinical practice, however, despite evidence
supporting its effectiveness. Historically, AR has failed to become
embraced by the wider dispensing community for a number of reasons. First,
it is viewed as time consuming by many practitioners. Even in the face of
solid evidence supporting its effectiveness, AR has not been widely
embraced because it has taken time away from the more lucrative and
perhaps more rewarding task of fitting hearing aids.
Full Story
