ETTC conducts free hearing tests in May

Dr. Susan Jones, audiologist at East Texas Treatment Center tests Louise Harrison's hearing. During May hearing tests are free at ETTC. Call for an appointment. Hearing is something we take for granted -until we lose it.

"Most people don't like to admit they have a hearing problem," said Dr. Susan Jones, audiologist at the East texas Treatment Center (ETTC). "But the more people use equipment like iPods and listen to loud sounds, the more problems with their hearings they are going to develop."

Jones said regular conversations are rated at 50 decibels (dB). However, many are tuned into audio programs that are 100 dbs.

"In older people, you see a loss of hearing in the higher frequencies where you find consonants," Jones said. "Younger people tend to develop trouble with lower frequencies."

As an audiologist, Jones works with rehabilitating and habilitating people with hearing disorders.

"When you have a 'rehab' problem, that's one that has developed," she said. "A 'habitation' patient started out with the problem.'

Children needing habilitation have hearing problems due to a variety of reasons including suffering from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, some medication the mother took during pregnancy, a congenital problem, or "we just don't know."

"Ears develop early during pregnancy and you have to be careful because the ear is delicate," Jones said. "Three in every 1,000 children have hearing loss." Jones said that may not seem like many, but "hearing loss causes children to get behind in learning."

She said hospitals are universally conducting hearing screening before the baby is released from the hospital.

"If a problem is found, then we can start early treatment," she said. "This can include speech therapy as well as hearing therapy."

Jones said she sees mostly people 50 and older at ETTC but the facility not has the capability to test infants.

During May, the East Texas Treatment Center will conduct free hearing screenings each Thursday by appointment only. Appointments can be made by calling (903) 984-5571.

Jones said today people have options when it comes to hearing assisting devices: the hearing aid, amplifying telephone, personal headsets for televisions, phone and doorbell alerting devices, to name a few.

In fact, Jones said, a new hearing instrument that takes its cue from digital cameras can provide more accurate sound quality for its wearers.

Jones said the new ReSound Pixel hearing instrument from GN ReSound uses "high-resolution" digital processing to more faithfully reproduce the sounds the wearer wants to hear.

"Middle and low frequencies are crucial to our perception of variations in tone and intensity in voices, music and similar sounds," said Jones. "However, most hearing instruments focus computing resources on delivering resolution at high frequencies only. This technical limitation makes them unable to adequately reproduce the rich, nuanced sound of daily life."

The ReSound Pixel hearing instrument works with thousands more "sound pixels" across the entire frequency range, similar to how digital cameras use thousands of pixels (the smallest unit of visual information) to provide high-resolution images. The result is more detailed, more natural and more balanced sound quality in all environments and with all types of fittings.

ReSound Pixel's high-resolution sound processing can divide and analyze different frequency sounds as efficiently as the human ear does. This also prevents it from being overloaded

by more sound information than it can instantly process, a problem for other hearing instruments that results in lost speech cues and choppy sound.

ReSound Pixel's higher across-the-board resolution also provides greater accuracy in isolating and suppressing noise. And its adaptive directionality feature makes sure the loudest noise source in the room isn't amplified, even if it moves around quickly.

"More and more, sound quality has become a key success factor for patient acceptance of hearing instruments," said Jones. "And with Pixel, I've found that patients notice the difference the instant they put it on their ears."