The Benefits of Auditory Training: A Case Study

Recently, a patient by the name of “Patricia” successfully completed a 12-session course of one-on-one auditory training with one of our audiologists, Dr. Alexandra Taylor and we believe her case is a wonderful example of the benefits of auditory training.

More about “Patricia”:

• A significant degree of bilateral hearing loss, but yet not enough hearing loss that she is a candidate for cochlear implants.
  
• Her hearing loss is the most common type: sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). SHNL can be due to age, noise exposure, side effects of medications, genetics, other health conditions, or a combination of all of the above.
• Though she receives a great deal of benefit from her hearing aids, the degree of her hearing loss prevents “Patricia” from understanding speech as well as she would like in a variety of situations, in particular restaurants and meetings.
• Recently retired, “Patricia” would like to maintain a social lifestyle as she enters this new stage of life.

More about synchronous (one-on-one) auditory training:

• 12 one-hour sessions
• Each session includes listening exercises with the goal of improving the brain’s ability to make sense of what the ears send to it. In “Patricia’s” case, her auditory processing skills needed to overcome the deficits and distorted sound that her ears and hearing aids were delivering to her brain. (Deficits and distortions that are common with her type and degree of hearing loss.)

“Patricia’s” Outcome:

• After the 12 sessions of auditory training, “Patricia” subjectively felt that she was able to understand speech better in many situations, including restaurants and meetings. 
• Before beginning auditory training and following auditory training our audiologists tested “Patricia’s” speech understanding abilities. The data is consistent with her perception of improvement. Prior to auditory training, if sentences were presented to “Patricia” with competing noise that was almost as loud as the sentences, “Patricia” was unable to repeat any of the words of any of the sentences. Following auditory training, she was able to repeat 50% of the words in the sentences correctly. Prior to auditory training, “Patricia” was able to correctly identify individual phonemes (individual sounds of speech such as “ah”, “s”, “sh”, “oo”) at a rate of 42%, increasing to 63% following auditory training.
  
  

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To find out if auditory training can help you understand speech better, call our office and schedule a consultation today. While initial evaluations are performed in-office, auditory training sessions can be performed over video chat technology.

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West Chester: 610-431-2411

Wayne: 610-688-6003