Hello all,
I have lurked these forms from time to time seeking advice and reviews and have received a lot of helpful information over the years, but I am currently at a cross-roads and a loss for how to continue.
I have worn hearing aids since I was 3 months old (currently going on 30). I have been a paramedic for the past 8 years. When I first started as an EMT I used to take my hearing aids out and use a standard stethoscope which worked well-enough. When I became a paramedic I decided I no longer wanted to take my hearing aids out and risk contamination with bodily fluids so I purchased and used a Cardionics E-Scope I which worked AMAZINGLY well with my hearing aids at the time, a pair of Starkey IQ9 ITC. They also worked well with Starkey IQ9 CIC that I started with, I eventually changed to the ITC because I wanted to fit a telecoil in (a feature I later deemed USELESS). Almost two years ago I switched to a BTE-RIC with full shell RIC Costco KS5. These HA’s have been more trouble than anything I have previously used in my life, and they have never played nice with my stethoscope. I have tried everything from a streamer, to using over the ear headphones, to eventually giving up and taking my hearing aids and reverting to a traditional analog stethoscope. I was recently accepted to medical school and will be attending in the fall (woohoo!). This new chapter of my life leads me with new hearing related challenges–I am now going to need to listen for heart murmurs and other difficult to hear body sounds that I did not need to hear as a paramedic. Therefore I am currenly in the market for new HA’s and a new stethoscope, and I would love some help from the medical professionals on this page whose comments I have read numerous times.
Many previous posters have found luck with open-fit style domes. This is not an option for me as my hearing loss is too severe for that.
I thought I found quite the novel solution recently with bone-conducting headphones that I could plug into my stethoscope. That idea fell flat. The consumer technology is just not there yet and the “bone conduction” is realistically just a speaker outside the ear (yes there is some bone conduction occuring as I can feel it, but it is minimal compared to sound transference. My wife could hear the audio across the room with background noise on better than I could w/o HA on).
My main issue is:
- Resign to removing my HA’s (and stick with BTE for easy removal) and switch to standard stethoscope (although I would likely still get an amplified one) OR
- Try to find a HA that will allow me to use an electronic stethoscope over the HA or stream to the HA.
I would vastly prefer option 2, but from what I have read it is very difficult for HA to reproduce the frequency range I would require for heart murmurs (sub 200Hz).
This is a few years old audiogram and it was done hastily, but gives a pretty good idea:
250 | 500 | 1k | 2k | 4k | 6k | |
RIGHT | 45 | 55 | 85 | 75 | 60 | 55 |
LEFT | 35 | 55 | 65 | 75 | 60 | 60 |
Thank you in advance for any thoughts/suggestions.
-Peter