L/A Hearing by Deborah Carroll Feature Writer / Photographer “In the United States, one in five people will experience some degree of hearing loss,” stated Dr. Ashlee Vandiver, the audiologist at L/A Hearing in Lewiston. “Of those 48 million people living with hearing loss, only about 25 percent will seek treatment and even fewer will wear a hearing aid." Vandiver, who grew up in Turner and did her undergraduate work at the University of Maine Orono, obtained a doctorate in audiology at Towson University near Baltimore before coming home to L-A. L/A Hearing Center, a division of Sandcastle Clinical and Educational Services, is located at 72 St r aw ber r y Avenue i n L e w i ston. According to Vandiver, L/A Hearing Center is a comprehensive hea r ing hea lt h ca re organization. “We are the Lewiston-Auburn area’s only independent, private, nonprofit provider of comprehensive audiological services. Many people have a misconception that Sandcastle is just about children,” said Vandiver. In fact, L/A Hearing Center offers a full range of diagnostic hearing tests for adults as well as children, including newborns referred due to concerns raised before discharge from the hospital, and adults with presbycusis, or age-related hearing loss.
Vandiver noted that while adults often suffer from presbycusis, genetics and environmental factors are often responsible for hearing loss in both children and adults. “Conductive hearing loss resulting from recurrent ear infections and chronic middle ear congestion are often the cause of temporary hearing loss in children, and later in life these kids are at risk for auditory processing disorders,” said Vandiver. Signs that should raise concern include tugging at the ear or ear pain/aches, as well as back-to-back ear infections or chronic congestion. Children with hearing loss often experience developmental delays in speech and language. By one year of age, a child should have acquired at least a one-word vocabulary, and by two they should begin to put a couple of words together. Vandiver added, "For every child who has a speech and language evaluation, we also recommend a diagnostic hearing evaluation.” Hearing aid technolog y, for both children and adults, has come a long way since the days of the large, poorly fit hearing aids. “New technology comes out about every two years, and is available for people with varying degrees of hearing loss,” said Vandiver. L/A Hearing Center offers not only state-of-the-art testing, but custom hearing aid fittings, followup care and a wide variety of assistive devices to improve hearing. They also service hearing aids that were purchased and fit elsewhere. “Even if two people have the same degree of hearing loss, their hearing aid prescriptions will likely be different based on their lifestyle a nd com mu n ic at ion need s,” ex pla i ned Vandiver. Therefore, L/A Hearing Center offers an individualized vs. a one-size-fits-all approach to better hearing.
Dr. Ashlee Vandiver examines two-year-old Harper Cummins of Lewiston. Hearing aids are small and act like a little computer in your ear. Because of advances in technology hearing aids can automatically adjust to the situation. Many offer the listener features such as improved listening in noise as they are tuned to pick up human speech. Hearing aids communicate with each other to assess the environment that they are in and adjust accordingly. For example, they can determine which direction the sound is coming from and where the background noise is, filtering out the undesirable noise in favor of human speech. “Ma ny hea r i ng a ids a re a lso Bluetoot h c om p a t i b l e ,” s a i d Va nd i v e r, a nd c a n communicate with external devices such as telephones, televisions and computers. For students, a companion microphone can be purchased and a teacher or lecturer can use it to transmit sound directly to the hearing aid, helping to overcome the problems created by distance, reverberation and noise in lecture halls. Add it iona l ly, some chu rches a nd mov ie t heatres now use a “loop system” which sets up a magnetic field that shuts down the
Dr. Vandiver prepares Rose Dubay for a hearing test. microphone on the hearing aid and tunes the device into the pulpit or theater’s sound s y stem, ma k i ng chu rches a nd t heat res accessible to hearing aid users. Vandiver said, “A lerting dev ices are a lso available which hook up to fire alarms to v ibrate a bed at night when the alarm is sounded, or can make a light flash when the telephone or doorbell rings.” L/A Hearing Center also offers custom hearing protection such as hunter’s ear plugs and in-ear musicians’ monitors, as well as other custom devices that completely block out sound or filter out only specific frequencies for musicians. Hearing loss caused from repeated exposure to loud sounds is a permanent hearing loss, but is also preventable. Wearing hearing protection, beginning at a young age, is the best way to prevent irreversible damage to the ear caused from noise exposure. To learn more about how Dr. Vandiver and L/A Hearing Center can help you fully experience the world around you through good auditory health, call 782-2150.
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Advertising Supplement, Sun Journal, Lewiston, Maine, Saturday, April 20, 2013
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