- In this video, I'm talking about an alternative way
to treat single-sided deafness, coming up.
(upbeat hip hop music)
Hi, guys, Cliff Olson, Doctor of Audiology
and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions in Anthem, Arizona
and I cover a bunch of hearing-related information
to help make you a better informed consumer,
so if you're into that, make sure you hit
that subscribe button, and don't forget to click the bell
to receive a notification every time I release a new video.
There are several different treatment options
when it comes to single-sided deafness.
You have bone-anchored hearing aids
like the Baha Attract and Connect,
and you also have the ADHEAR system from Med-El,
and then you have traditional hearing aids
that use either a CROS or a BiCROS setup
using a CROS transmitter.
Each of these systems work in a similar way.
They basically take sound from your bad ear
and send it over to your good ear
so your good ear can do the work
and actually understand speech
that's coming from your bad side.
It's actually overcoming a phenomenon
that we call the head shadow effect.
The head shadow effect is essentially the phenomenon
that happens when sound is trying
to cross over your head into your other ear
and it ends up resulting
in about a six or seven decibel reduction
in that sound, which can completely destroy your ability
to understand speech, from your bad side,
or even make you completely unaware
that anyone's even talking to you from your bad side.
In the case that you also have a hearing loss
in your better hearing ear, these devices
can be programmed to amplify that sound
once it gets over to your better hearing ear,
so not only are you gonna overcome the head shadow effect,
you can also amplify it so you can overcome
the hearing loss in that particular ear.
However, each one of these treatment options
tends to ignore your bad ear,
and what if your bad ear has a little bit
of residual hearing left in it?
In some cases of single-sided deafness,
you could have some measurable hearing thresholds
in your bad ear, you could also even have a little bit
of word recognition ability in that ear,
just not enough to give you complete speech understanding
capabilities in that ear.
You might also have tinnitus in that ear.
A lot of individuals who go through a sudden hearing loss
will be left with this really loud roaring tinnitus
that drives them absolutely crazy,
and what if we could actually stimulate that particular ear
to gain some additional benefits like binaural summation,
which is the increased benefit that you get
when both ears participate in a task,
or what if it could actually mask over some of that tinnitus
that you have, then it would make sense
to actually amplify that deaf ear,
as well as sending sound over to the better ear.
This type of treatment that I'm talking about,
is called AMPCROS.
AMPCROS is essentially a way that we set up hearing aids
in order to amplify the side that is your bad ear
and also sending that sound over to your better hearing ear
and maybe even amplifying it
if that ear has a hearing loss as well.
Now, AMPCROS isn't necessarily a product.
It's rather a way that a hearing care provider
can set up a set of hearing devices
in order to accomplish this function,
and not a lot of hearing care providers are aware
of how to actually do this.
An AMPCROS setup is accomplished by taking hearing devices
that have a binaural phone feature.
That binaural phone feature can then be set up
to accomplish what we want it to.
The binaural phone feature originally was designed
for individuals who hold the phone up to one ear
and want to send that phone call from that side
into their other ear as well,
so they can hear the phone call in both ears
which increases their speech understanding.
It works terrific for phone calls,
but you can also use it for single-sided deafness.
By using this binaural phone feature,
we can essentially set those devices up
to provide amplification to your bad ear
and also send sound over to your good ear
and if we need to, we can amplify that sound as well
to make sure that you can hear sound from your bad side
in your good ear, as well as masking over any tinnitus
or giving you any little bit of additional benefit
by providing amplification to your deaf side.
Now, even though AMPCROS can be a terrific treatment option
for a variety of individuals who can still get
a little bit of residual hearing on their bad side,
it isn't without its shortcomings,
and so it has one particular shortcoming
that you have to deal with, and that is,
when you actually use a phone feature
instead of an automatic program setting,
you're actually going to limit the amount
of automatic features that you can have
in those hearing devices, so if you go to a noisy restaurant
you're not gonna be able to use some
of the noise reduction features
of that particular hearing aid,
because you're essentially telling that hearing aid
that you want it to remain in the phone feature.
I would venture to say that there is a number of people
out there that are using a bone-anchored hearing aid
or a BiCROS or a CROS hearing aid setup
that would get even more benefit by using an AMPCROS setup.
If you're someone who has a little bit of residual hearing
on your bad side, and you also wanna be able
to cross that sound over into your better hearing ear,
AMPCROS might be the right treatment option for you.
Quick shout out to Dr. Scot Frink, who provided
some of the content and inspiration for this video.
If you are someone with single-sided deafness
and you're up in the Salem, Oregon area,
Dr. Scot Frink is one of the foremost experts
in our industry for single-sided deafness
using CROS, BiCROS and AMPCROS.
That's it for this video, if you have any questions,
leave them in the comment section below.
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I'll see you next time. (mild hip hop music)