- I wanna apologize right off the bat here because in this video, I'm
talking about the things that bother me the most about incompetent hearing care providers. Coming up. (upbeat music) Hi Guys, Cliff Olson, Doctor of Audiology and Father of Applied Hearing
Solutions in Phoenix, 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 the notification
every time I post a new video. Alright, this video's gonna
be what I consider a rant. So unless you wanna hear me
complain about an incompetent hearing care provider for
the next several minutes, please go watch one of many other videos where I maintain a much
more positive outlook. So here's the deal, I'm
still pretty fired up about a patient encounter
that I had yesterday. That showed a significant
lack of competency by a hearing care provider
that happens to work at a big box retailer. Now before you start
leaving me nasty comments in the comments section talking about how I'm just biased
against big box retailers, slow down a little bit because I know that there some really
good hearing care providers that work at some of
these big box retailers. That being said, there
are some individuals in this industry that have
absolutely no business treating individuals with hearing loss. As I was performing a case history on this patient yesterday, he reported hearing difficulty
over the past five years and his wife had basically forced him to go in and get his hearing evaluated because it was absolutely
driving her crazy. The other thing that he mentioned is that the hearing in his right
ear was significantly worse than the hearing in his left ear. So naturally, he went down
to his local big box store to get a free hearing test so he could see what was going on with his hearing. They hearing care provider
that administered the test identified a significant asymmetry
between both of his ears. With his left ear that is
indicated by the blue X's having a mild high-frequency
sensory neural hearing loss and his right ear, which is
indicated by the red circles and the red triangles,
having a mild sloping to severe high-frequency
sensory neural hearing loss. On top of that, the patients
word recognition score was 100% in the left ear
but 0%, that's right, a big goose egg in his right ear, which basically means
that when you overcome that hearing loss with amplification, by the time that sound
makes it from the ear to the brain, he can
understand none of it. No speech understood whatsoever. This type of asymmetry between
the right and the left ear should immediately trigger a
referral to a medical doctor. I mean this is stuff that they teach you first semester of grad school. When you have an asymmetry
that is that significant, you need to get them to a medical doctor because when you lose your
hearing, you typically lose it in both ears at
roughly the same pace. When you have one ear outpacing the other, that could indicate a
serious medical condition. So what does the big box
hearing care provider do next? You guessed it. He pops a hearing aid in his
ear instead of having him go to an ENT or
autologist, and he has them walk around the warehouse
with the hearing aid inside of his ear so the
patient can basically have a horrific experience with the sound because they have zero
ability to understand any information coming in to that ear. Thank goodness that individual decided to leave that warehouse
without pursuing treatment because he might be in a substantially worse position right now. Now if you can tell, I'm
obviously pretty fired up about this interaction that I had with this patient yesterday. And in case you're unaware of
the reason why I'm so upset, let me lay it out very
clearly to you here. The first reason this
makes me so stinking angry is because when you have an asymmetry, a significant asymmetry between
the right and the left ear, you have to get that individual
referred to a medical doctor because they could be
having an acoustic neuroma or a tumor literally growing
on their auditory nerve that blocks sound from
the ear to the brain. An acoustic neuroma that goes undetected can exert pressure on the brainstem which can ultimately cause headaches, facial numbness, facial
twitches, visual disturbances, difficulty swallowing and even death, as the functioning of the brain stem is significantly impaired. Yes, you heard me right. Acoustic neuromas can actually kill you. And in case you are
unaware, the brain stem is vitally important for bodily functions. So they regulate things like
consciousness, blood pressure, heart rate and breathing. At a minimum, any hearing care provider should be aware of the
hearing loss symptoms of conditions that can
pretty much kill you and refer you accordingly. But did that happen here? Nope. The second thing that
makes me angry about this is that the hearing care provider decided to put a hearing
aid inside of an ear that has 0% word recognition ability. Now you know what they say,
if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Meaning that with limited
tools, single mind people apply these tools indiscriminately
and inappropriately. This patient has a case
of single-sided deafness and we don't know the cause
of that single-sided deafness. So when this individual gets
referred to a medical doctor, most likely the outcome of that visit will be that this individual
needs to get an MRI done to see if there's a tumor
growing on that auditory nerve. And if there is a tumor
growing on that nerve, that tumor might need to be taken out, which would lead this individual basically in the same
position he is right now, with no hearing in his right ear. There are very specific treatment options to treat single-sided deafness. And those options are the following. You have CROS treatment, BiCROS treatment, AmpCROS treatment, a
bone-anchored hearing aid, a bone-anchored implant, or
possibly even a cochlear implant if in fact it is not an acoustic neuroma. None of which this big
box hearing care provider had the ability to
treat this patient with, and most likely, this
individual wouldn't even be able to advise this patient on. That being said, this kind
of stuff happens all the time when you go to a provider who does not have the appropriate amount of education to be able to advise individuals on their hearing treatment options. And this is precisely the reason why you need to base your
choice on where to go for hearing treatment on how qualified the hearing care professional is that works in a particular location. And you need to be an informed consumer so you can understand your hearing loss to ensure that you're actually receiving the right type of treatment. Fortunately, this patient
stumbled across my clinic so I could get him pointed
in the right direction for the appropriate
diagnosis and treatment of his case of single-sided deafness. And so this patient's gonna be okay. But if you find yourself in a
situation like this as well, you need to make sure
that you are well informed about the condition that you have before you just jump
into getting treatment by and Joe Shmo who's
dispensing hearing aids. Alright guys, I just wanna apologize again for the negativity in this video. To be honest, I'm quite
surprised you actually lasted this long. That being said, there are a few things that just really bother the heck out of me and the safety of
individuals with hearing loss is at the top of that list. Alright guys, so I recorded
that portion of the video several weeks ago and obviously,
I was emotionally charged when I filmed it. And I didn't really feel
comfortable posting the video. At least not until I got an outcome from this individual's MRI. So I have his report right here. And I'm gonna share with you here that he had an 11 by
five by six millimeter vestibular schwannoma,
which is otherwise known as an acoustic neuroma. So he did have a tumor
growing on his auditory nerve. Now I know there are situations
where you send someone in to go get an MRI and you're like, "Oh that person definitely
has an acoustic neuroma." And it comes back and it says no abnormal findings on the report. But it doesn't mean
that you shouldn't send that individual in just to make sure that it's not something more serious. So there you go. I thought that you might like to know the actual outcome for this patient. He is gonna undergo surgery, have this acoustic neuroma removed, and hopefully all will be well for him to continue on
with Bi-CROS treatment. That's it for this video. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments section below. If you liked the video, please share it. If you wanna see other
videos just like this one, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Also feel free to check out
my website, drcliffaud.com (upbeat music)
