“You don’t realize how often you’re saying, ‘I’m sorry. What was that?’” Larry says.

He also plays guitar in a band and would turn up the volume on his monitor on stage to try to hear the high notes better.

“Playing loudly didn’t solve the problem,” he remembers.

Larry eventually went to Sunnybrook’s Audiology Clinic which led to a turning point that helped improve his hearing.

“You don’t know what you’re not hearing,” explains Larry. “I didn’t realize how hard I was working to hear things.”

Hearing check

“It’s important to get a hearing test if you suspect you are having difficulty hearing,” says Michael Lam, a hearing instrument dispenser in Sunnybrook’s Hearing Aid Centre. “Untreated hearing loss often leads to patients avoiding social situations and conversations.”

Michael Lam is a hearing instrument dispenser in Sunnybrook’s Hearing Aid Centre.

A physician’s referral is needed for a hearing test. From there, an appointment will be made with an audiologist, who specializes in the prevention, identification and management of hearing loss and balance disorders.

“An audiologist will ask the patient about their hearing ability and how it impacts their life at home and work,” explains Juljia Adamonis, Sunnybrook audiologist. “From there it’s about working with the patient to personalize what hearing aid style and features will work best for them, and then following up in the future to help with any changes.”

Larry has been seeing the team at the Sunnybrook’s Hearing Aid Centre for several years and feels supported by the experts he has worked with, including Michael.

“It’s a diamond in the rough to have that centre,” says Larry. “The team is outstanding. There is great continuity of care. When I go there, they know who I am. It’s refreshing.”

“Hearing is crucial,” says Michael. “I am involved with fitting hearing aids and counselling patients on how to use and adapt to their hearing aids. I see them regularly to help them maintain their hearing devices and ensure they are hearing to the best of their ability.”

“He explained details in a way that was easy to understand. It was a good process,” says Larry.

How hearing aids have changed over the years

“When it came time to consider hearing aids, I first thought of the ones I saw growing up. They were big and clunky,” Larry recalls.

Michael says hearing aids today are much different than those of the past.

“Hearing technology has come a long way!  Most hearing aids are very discreet. They can easily connect and stream with phones, tablets, and televisions,” Michael explains. “They can help streamline a patient’s communication and technology use. We can also make custom fit musician plugs to help minimize noise damage to a person’s hearing.”

Larry says it took a little while to get used to the hearing aids but in the end, they made a huge difference.

“I didn’t realize how hard I was working to hear before. I was struggling trying to hear certain letters and sounds. You get tired. In social situations, it could be exhausting,” says Larry. “After getting the hearing aid, I wasn’t struggling to hear. I didn’t need the extra effort. I didn’t have to concentrate on a person’s face so hard. It’s a very subtle thing, but I could just hear better. I felt a lot better in social situations.”

“It is rewarding when you can help someone,” says Michael. “Pursuing hearing aids can help an individual engage more fully and confidently with the people in their lives. It has been exciting to help patients use new hearing aid technology to help them hear and communicate with the world.”

Larry says over the years, he has found a good fit with his hearing aids, which he adds, have made a big difference in his day-to-day life.

“They’re really comfortable and most people, even close friends, don’t know I have them,” he says. “It’s been a huge breakthrough for me.”

The post How improving your hearing can make a difference in daily life appeared first on Your Health Matters.

Answer: Most definitely. Optimizing hearing and vision for the person with dementia is a valuable and important contribution to care. It makes obvious sense that if a person cannot see, or struggles to hear, they are less likely to attend to information or understand it, and as a result they are less likely to remember. There is good research to suggest that hearing and vision problems are common sources of “excess disability” – a term meant to describe worse cognitive and functional impairment as a result of causes beyond the degree of dementia pathology per se.

Ensuring vision and audiology assessments have been completed is a simple and relatively painless process for most patients and caregivers. Wearing appropriate eye glasses is also a fairly simple intervention with good compliance. Arranging for cataract surgery, may be more challenging, but given the increasing simplicity and excellent tolerability of the surgery, mild to moderate dementia should definitely not be seen as a barrier to improving vision through this procedure. Dealing with hearing loss can be more problematic. Not all types of hearing loss can be improved by hearing aids, and hearing aids can be very difficult to use, or can be poorly tolerated for some people with dementia. While I always recommend consultation with an audiologist, for some patients however, use of a “pocket talker” can be a simple and inexpensive alternative that might be better tolerated than traditional hearing aids.

Regardless of the difficulty involved in optimizing hearing and vision, these interventions are well worth the effort. For example, a recent study in elderly people suggested that wearing hearing aids improved performance on cognitive testing compared to people who didn’t wear hearing aids, even though the group who wore hearing aids had worse hearing. Sensory impairment has also been associated with emotional symptoms like depression in people with dementia. Perhaps even more surprising, psychotic symptoms such as visual hallucinations (seeing things that aren’t there) and auditory hallucinations (hearing imaginary voices) have been associated with vision and hearing problems in people with dementia. Most importantly, there are reports that some of these symptoms can be improved when hearing and vision are improved.

The post Senses and Sensibility: Optimizing hearing and vision for people with dementia appeared first on Your Health Matters.

Three months ago, Paul Wheeler was getting ready for a milestone surgery. Not only was he the 1000th patient to receive a cochlear implant from Sunnybrook’s implant team, but the procedure was also the last shot he had to regain hearing in his left ear. Hearing aids just weren’t cutting it anymore. He needed another option.

I was lucky enough to meet with Paul on the morning of his surgery, and remember him being cautiously optimistic before heading into the operating room. We joked about practice making perfect, but the weight of the day was palpable. At a certain point, he told me, you have trust that the experts know what they’re doing.

Paul Wheeler has his cochlear implant activated for the first time.

The cochlear implant is left off for one month after surgery, giving the body a chance to heal. After that, patients come back to Sunnybrook to have it activated. The truth is, this experience is as individual as every patient. Some hear sounds and words right away, while for others, the process can take months. Paul told me he didn’t bring his wife to the appointment because he wasn’t expecting miracles that day. So with tempered expectations, we headed into the exam room for the so-called moment of truth.

You get moments working in a hospital that truly inspire you, and what happened next literally brought me to tears. Within a few minutes, Paul was repeating words and sentences, and telling me my voice sounded pretty clear. Two decades of slow hearing decline, social stigma and dwindling hopes had literally turned on a dime. He could hear again, and the moment is captured in my video.

I recently caught up with Paul at his home to see how the last few months have been. He told me it’s been a lot of work getting used to the device, and relearning various sounds. He admitted it’s also easy to misplace the small external parts of the device. But, he said, all of that has been pretty minor considering about 90% of his hearing is restored on the left side. The sound of his car’s turn signal clicker is now clear, and he’s even asked his wife to turn the television volume down a few times. Music is musical again.

I’m so grateful to have met Paul and that he let me tag along for the last three months. One million patients come through these hospital doors every year, but he’s one I’ll never forget.

The post Watch: patient’s cochlear implant activated for first time appeared first on Your Health Matters.