- Hey guys, welcome back to the Dr. Cliff AuD vlog.
This is vlog number 73.
And this week I wanna talk to you about
incorporating new treatments inside of our clinic
at Applied Hearing Solutions.
So over the course of my time in audiology
there was a period of time
where I got to work pretty closely
with this product called Lyric,
which is an extended wear hearing aid
that you basically have placed inside of your ear canal
for about two to three months at a time
only to be having it removed by a hearing care professional,
and replaced with another Lyric device
for another period of two to three months.
We are going to start offering Lyric inside of the clinic.
And we're actually in the process
of going through like training to do this.
Now, I fit a bunch of Lyric in there past
at my external placements
but it's something that you have to be like certified for,
and I was never I guess properly certified for this
in the past, or they just decided to recertify
to be able to fit Lyric inside of our clinic.
Over the past couple of years
Phonak who's the company who happens
to own the Lyric product
they've actually been taking Lyric out of clinics
because a lot of clinics they had it and they could offer it
but they just weren't fitting a whole lot of it.
So Phonak really wanted to focus on key locations
to make sure that those locations were really solid
at fitting Lyric because in order to be good at Lyric
you have to do a lot of Lyric hearing aids.
And so I actually had been inquiring
over the past couple of years
as to whether or not my clinic could start offering Lyric.
And it was one of those things where like
they were really like downsizing the whole Lyric thing,
and these clinics that were not fitting a whole lot of them
they were actually closing down those locations to Lyric.
I mean they weren't just closing down the office locations,
they were pulling Lyric from those locations,
and so the amount of locations
that you could actually find to get Lyric
had been on the decline.
And so I had been basically asking every single time
my rep came into the office or that I talked to my rep
I'm like, hey, so what's going on with Lyric?
Can we start offering Lyric?
I mean I think of my clinic as being a clinic
that we have all the different
innovative technologies there,
and I wanted to have Lyric as an option.
Well as we would have it
over the course of the last month or so
we found out that we're actually going to be able
to offer Lyric inside of the clinic.
And it looks like by the end of June
we'll actually be able to fit Lyric,
and become certified their providers.
Now, through the training I do wanna capture some video,
and show you guys some of that video.
If you've been watching or following along
on my Instagram channel you've already know this news,
and know that I've been actually starting,
and going through the training for Lyric.
From what I can tell it's kind of like riding a bike.
I mean I fit Lyric before it should be, you know,
just like jumping in there.
They have progressed through different generations
of Lyric over time,
but in general it's basically the same product.
Now, the reason the product is so cool,
and just kind of unique
is that it is one of these extended wear devices.
So if you're someone who has poor finger dexterity,
or they're a patient who has dementia,
and can never remember to put their hearing aids on, right?
Or if you're someone who happens to not like
the aesthetic of a hearing aid,
and you just want something completely invisible
to go inside of your ear
then Lyric is a really a perfect option.
On the side of that too
is that they are digitally programmable analog hearing aids.
And there are a lot of individuals out there
who'd prefer the sound quality of analog
versus a digital hearing aid.
And because you have this thing
so deeply inside of your ear canal
you don't need to apply a whole lot of amplification
in order to create a lot of intensity of sound.
So you can use these devices to fit a wide range
of hearing losses too.
It's not restricting you to only
mild to moderate hearing losses.
And it's just really cool
because you get 24/7 hearing.
When you go to bed at night you still hear.
And when you think about it
someone who has quote unquote normal hearing
when they go to bed they hear,
they hear all of these different sounds
whether it's thunder or lightning outside or what have you,
and for someone to wear a Lyric hearing aid
you basically go to sleep in it, you shower in it,
you do everything that you would normally do,
you just can't go skydiving regularly,
you can't go scuba diving regularly,
you can't do some immersible like head in water swimming,
you can do water aerobics things like that.
But in general it's a pretty cool way
to treat your hearing loss
versus a traditional hearing aid that you have to
put in and take out every single day.
And there are a couple other benefits
to this particular product as well,
and it's that the whole tinnitus side of things.
So there's a lot of individuals who go to bed at night,
and they have this perception of tinnitus in their ears
because they have to take their hearing aids out,
and hearing aids are actually
a really, really effective tool for managing tinnitus.
And when you have to take your hearing aids out at night
when you go to bed
all of a sudden this tinnitus comes back in,
and there's nothing that you can do about it
except for maybe like turn on a fan,
or use some kind of other masking device in that situation.
But for a lot of people it's much more effective
to just have treated hearing when you go to bed,
and Lyrica is so cool because they allow you to do that.
Now, there are a couple of potential drawbacks of Lyric,
you've got this aspect that if you create a lot of ear wax
in your ears that is a contra indication.
I mean you can't just produce copious amounts of ear wax,
and then expect this device not to have issues
inside of your ear canal.
Of course all those things that I mentioned before
about scuba diving and stuff like that,
or if you get MRIs like extremely frequently
for whatever reason
you have to be able to pull the device out on your own
but then you have to go back into your professional,
and get the device reinserted inside of your ear canal.
You can't have any like ear canal perforations,
or any conductive issues with your hearing loss,
so there's a lot of things that potentially could remove you
from a candidate of Lyric,
but the vast majority of individuals
would likely be a candidate for Lyric devices,
and I'm just excited to be able to offer
this particular product inside of my clinic.
And it is something that requires a lot of expertise
on the professional who's fitting it to you.
Verification of it is a little bit more complicated
because real ear verification is not really
something that you can use on these devices
since the Lyric hearing aid the tip of it
sits about four millimeters away from your eardrum.
Now you don't feel it when you have it inside of your ears,
it's placed, it's really soft spongy material,
you don't feel it in your ear canal.
To be able to get a probe tip
in that little four millimeter gap
would be extremely, extremely difficult.
But that being said the Lyric device
is really a solid product,
it's been around for quite some time.
I'm excited to fit it.
I'm excited to start sharing more information
about what this particular hearing aid can do.
So even if you don't live anywhere close to me
but it's a type of product that would help you,
or a family member,
or an aging parents or grandparents
that doesn't have the ability
to take care of their own devices,
or manually put them inside of their own ears,
Lyric is a really great option for that.
The other interesting thing about Lyric
is that it's based off of a subscription model.
So every year there is a subscription that you have to renew
because you have to go in regularly to get hearing care,
to get it swapped out by your hearing care professional.
And basically every time that a device goes dead
that device goes into the trash,
and you have to get a new device inserted
inside of your ear canals.
But you can year after year after year
renew this subscription.
The price will vary based on location.
I still don't know exactly what our price is going to be yet
inside of our clinic
but I'm sure that it will be something
that is lower than the cost of traditional hearing aids
but the only other side of that
is that you have to repay that subscription each year.
So even though it's a lower price
you have to pay it year after year.
So at some point with Lyric
there's the potential that you would be spending more money
for Lyric than you would with traditional hearing aids
unless you're the type of person who likes to get
a new hearing aid every two to three years
then you would potentially spend more
with a traditional hearing aid.
But like I mentioned before
I am going to be recording some more contents around that,
around the training.
I had this really cool CARL ear canal simulation
from AHead Simulations
which I'll be able to show you the actual placement
from inside of an ear canal, a dummy ear canal,
but inside of an ear canal
to kinda show you where it goes, how it's placed,
and all of that
so you guys can become a lot more familiar with it
before you even consider going to get Lyric
as a treatment for yourself.
I've also been chatting with the folks over at Earlens,
there is also a possibility
that our clinic may be able to fit Earlens in the future.
And the thing is is that Earlens actually requires that
you have an ENT that you can work with
because there are certain aspects of like
taking impressions for,
and fitting the lens on an eardrum that needs to be done
by a medical doctor like an ENT or otologist
but then the actual fitting of the Earlens device,
the processor is done by an audiologist.
So as long as we can actually find an ENT
to kind of like work alongside with for Earlens,
Earlens might also be something that I start talking about
a little bit more here in the future as well
as we basically embark on this mission
to offer basically anything and everything
that's like hearing device-related, right?
I don't know if we're gonna get
into the cochlear implant game anytime soon,
we're already starting to onboard
a couple of different technologies now
so we'll see how that goes.
But that is really it for this week's video guys.
I just wanted to kinda bring you up to date
with what's going on inside of our clinic,
new things that we're training on,
new things that we're gonna be offering in the clinic.
And as always guys I'll see you next week.
(upbeat music playing)