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Reverse Slope Hearing Loss

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I am a frustrated owner of a new pair of aids and an old case of low frequency hearing loss. I’ll give background info and ask questions at the end. I don’t really understand enough to know if you need all this info or not to answer the questions I have.

My from last Feb:

Hz/fq: 250…500…1000…1500…2000…3000…4000…6000…8000
-R:…55…60…50…20…10…5…15…10…5
dB-L:…75…70…60…35…25…15…20…15…5

Aids: Miracle Ear ME2100 OP (behind-the-ear)
Cost: $4280
Date of purchase: 7/27 (I have a 30 trial period)

My hearing is functional at work. But, I get complaints from my family that they are frustrated with my lack of hearing. I think the difference is 1) work is less chaotic noise-wise, 2) I work with children and women mostly, and 3) my family members mumble. My high and mid-high ranges seem to do a good job of assisting the losses I have at the low end.

I’ve been in with the audiologist twice to tinker with the aids. We have tinkered with both the sound quality and the comfort of the aids. On the first round she gave me large, . I heard a good friend worse with the aids than without them (she has a lowish voice for a woman). I may have heard a male friend better, but the results weren’t dramatic. On the second round she swapped out the old domes for smaller, vented domes because I felt the others were uncomfortable and my voice sounded booming. She boosted the lowest two frequencies almost all the way up and I got a warble in some mid-range frequencies (sounded like someone speaking under water). She lowered the mid-range frequencies which made the warble quieter, but didn’t make it go away.

The Questions:
How can I help direct the audiologist in helping me? The warble is in women’s voices mostly (I was using NPR as a guinea pig). It happens in words brOAd, bOArd, wAter, cOm, shOwEr, pAssed and nIne with capital letters being warbled. I hear it in my voice as well. I don’t seem to hear it in music.

Is this style of hearing aid a bad choice for me?

Am I being overly ambitious expecting a big difference in my hearing with these aids?

11 people in this conversation11 min readJump to latest

I used to belong to a forum for reverse slope loss…try to google reverse slope loss hearing forum…Neil Bauman is the creator of it I believe…you can do a search on here “reverse slope loss” or “cookie bite” loss…good luck!

There is a reverse slope Facebook page and a reverse slope Yahoo group. Google Reverse Slope hearing loss and download Neil Baumans’s article on programming hearing aids for reverse slope losses. Give it to your audiologist and have her program them exactly to Dr. Bauman’s instructions. It’s basically the opposite of what your audi is doing…that is, upping the low frequency. This causes upward spread of masking and distortion. There is also a new hearing instrument being announced in November that will address low frequency hearing loss for the first time. Don’t give up…we’re close to figuring this type of loss out!

I ran into a women that had a reverse slope loss and we were comparing our differing hearing losses, mine being HF ski slope. She told me her biggest problem’s was she only could hear out of one ear and was not able to understand men’s voices and I told her I had no trouble with men’s voices but I had trouble hearing some women and small children but that wasn’t my biggest problem but maybe we had proof that God has a sense of humor; since she couldn’t hear men and I had trouble hearing women!
Scott

I “hear” that a lot, Scott…since I have trouble hearing and understanding my husband! LOL! I need to know more about the hearing aid for reverse loss coming out in November…anyone have info. on that??? I am trialing aids now and I would wait for those if they were in my price range…maybe it would be worth it to wait??? Still need to see about these Phonaks…thanks! Rosie

Thanks all! I have been to Bauman’s website, but not the forum there. I also joined the facebook page, but it seems inactive currently.

I’m very interested in an aid for r-s hearing loss. I have another 2 weeks or so to try out the pair I have now. I’m getting adjusted to them and adjusting them to me too. But, they are not perfect (and they are very expensive).

The consanants “A” and “O” happen close to 500 Hz so if you are having trouble with them being too sharp it’s because that Hz is turned up to high. According to the Miracle Ear website these hearing aids have a “Noise reduction” system. Since “Noise” is low frequency, many hearing aids with older less expensive technology have systems that work against your amplification needs because they work against everything that is low frequency and and does not distinguish between what is speech and what is noise.
I would be surprised if you are seeing an Audiologist at Miracle Ear. Audiologist have a masters or a doctorate degree in Audiology which is an additional 2-4 years of education after college. Miracle ear predominately hires “Hearing aid dispensers” which may only have a high school degree and pass a licensing exam. Although I have seen a few . at Miracle ear. With your loss you need a closed or earmold in order to get the amplification youi need to make the low pitches audible and to prevent feedback. If you have an open dome and aren’t getting feedback I wouldn’t think you would be able to have enough amplification to fit your loss. OPEN DOMES SHOULD ONLY BE USED WHEN LOW Hz’s ARE ABOVE 40 ON THE AUIOGRAM. It should be comfortable in your ear and if it’s not the domes the wrong size.
I really like Oticon Hearing aids for just about every loss, but they have technology that determines what is speech (by the rhythm) and what is noise and will help you get the amplification you need and reduce the background noise. Because of your loss you will always hear more poorly in background noise, but you should be doing better than you are. Best of luck to you.

Hi Kelly! Thanks for your post. It’s hard to find good, current info about reverse-slope loss.

At miracle ear I see a sales person. The audiograph she did for me was not good (read: wrong). But, I have a folder full of audiographs done by an audiologist at an office already, so I didn’t care so much about that. She is working from the audiologists charts.
I have flip-flopped over and over again about whether to keep these aids or not (so expensive!). I’ll go in Friday and ask if the noise reduction can be turned off or reduced in some way. Maybe that’d help. Reading up at Neil Bauman’s website has given me some other tips.

I didn’t like the feeling of the , but someone said something about venting them in a small way like a pin prick.

@Gigiwatt said:

I didn’t like the feeling of the closed domes, but someone said something about venting them in a small way like a pin prick.

I have vents in mine, still feel a little bloked up but helps to still hear the very high frequencies we rely on and the aids can’t cover. I have done a lot of reading before getting my aids, I also got my Audiologist to read Neil Baumans’s article. I think that openned her mind a bit, she’s been in the field for 30 years and she admitted that some things said in the article were total opposite of what they had be doing.

Seems a lot of people have their 2cents to say on the subject, but you don’t read a lot of happy story from people affected. Best is to find an Audiologist that is not stuck in their ways and is ready to work with you to find the solution that works for you

Good luck :slight_smile:

In reply to @Gigiwatt

I think you would do well with custom made earmolds that had a Select-a-vent in them. This is a vent that allows you to place sizers in it to get the correct size of vent. Every ear canal feedbacks differntly based on the amount of gain and the size of your ear canal so it’s a balance game with the venting. Too much equals feedback, not enough equals a blocked feeling. This is easier to do with a high frequency loss because low Hz waves are longer and pass through the vent easily to the ear drum. High Hz’s are short and less powerful and need a bigger vent, which typically isn’t possible without creating feedback.
The other way to overcome this “imbalance” of sound quality is to amplify the low frequencies to audible levels and then amplify the high frequencies just enough so that both the low and High frequencies sound amplified. It makes things sound more balanced than when you have high amplified low Hz’s and no amplification in the high Hz’s. This rational works ok in low Hz loss b/c of the venting is allowing the low Hz to hit the eardrum naturally (B/c the waves travel longer through the vents, remember?) - but High Hz waves don’t act way. TThis also helps overcome the upward spread of masking you might have over the high Hz’s from amplifying the lows. The trick here is to not overamplify the highs I can’t say I have high hopes if the salesperson couldn’t the right :frowning: That’s technically the easiest part of her job. I wish you the best of luck. I always tell my patients the only hearing aids that are too expensive are the ones that don’t work. I know for what you paid for the miracle ears you could get a good mid level set of hearing aids from a reputable company and a licensed audiologist.

Last week, after almost three weeks of tinkering with domes large and small, vented and not vented, the miracle ear sales person sent out for an earmold. I have been using it since Friday, and I have less than one week to experiment with it before my 30 trial period ends Wednesday. They’re more comfortable than the domes and don’t fall out when I’m chewing. This is good! And they’re definitely louder for me than the domes were. But I feel fairly occluded - it has a small sized vent hole. I sound too loud and something else that I can’t put my finger on (but, I figure I can adjust to that). I had to take them out while eating at a restaurant because I couldn’t make sense of anything (I tried two settings). I find them helpful for TV watching and conversations with one or two people. I am missing a lot of high end noises, but in the miracle ear office, I feel like the high end was set plenty loud. Is this a venting issue?

I know there’s an adjustment period during which my brain needs to get used to all the new noise levels. But, I am feeling rushed with just a few days to decide if my brain needs to adjust or if the aids need to be returned.

Has anyone ever gotten their trial period extended?

In reply to @isa555

So frustrated! I’ve been looking for weeks online to find useful info. Neil Bauman’s website is helpful, but the info is several years old. Aids have progressed, no doubt, since his postings. I see pleas for help that go unanswered (aside from links to Bauman). I see websites aimed at hearing aid vendors which give the exact opposite advice than Bauman does. So the vendors are getting one set of advice and we with low frequency loss are giving/getting the opposite set of advice. And, in the end, people still seem to agree that there’s not a lot to be done for reverse-slope losses.

In reply to @Gigiwatt

@Gigiwatt said:

Has anyone ever gotten their trial period extended?

I haven’t but I was told I could if I needed to. It’s a lot of money, they would be silly to refuse. As KellyAud said, perhaps if those are not working out for you, you should consider looking somewhere else/for something else. You should still be able to hear your high frequencies, if you don’t then something is really wrong

In reply to @Gigiwatt

I feel like a lone ranger trying to get at least some benefit from hearing aids. I’ve had low freq lost since the birth of my daughter 25 years ago. I had all the tests done and in the end the experts told me that hearing aids would not be of much help. For the past 8 years I have been using hearing aids combined with a small fm system. So the hearing aids only help if I’m using an assistive device. I am playing now with adjusting my Phonak Ambras myself. I purchased the needed equipment etc. on-line. It’s been quite a learning experience and it takes dedication. I have also been helped by using aural rehabilitation programs that help you “listen” better. The program I am currently using is called “LACE” Listening and Communication Enhancement" by Neurotone, Inc. It really has helped me and I’m just a few weeks into it. I would highly recommend it and you can download directly from Neurotone and it costs less than $100. You have to be determined to do the rehab program for about 20 minutes a day. I was at a conference in June and there were some “papers” discussing the benefits of aural rehab and the conclusions were very positive for it. I think the answer for low freq loss lies in the use of many tools.

Edited

The LACE program sounds interesting. I was wondering if you could be more specific in what areas or ways the program has helped you. Thanks.

In reply to @isa555

I picked up my to see what my speech audiometry was since people here seem to know what that is all about.

Above the chart with the below info, NU6 and MLV are checked off. It says:

Ear……%…SL…Mask
R…20…92%…40…40
L…30…96%…40…45

Does that mean I hear very well without noise, but much worse with noise?

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