MOUNT VERNON — Avada Hearing Care in Mount Vernon celebrated Better Hearing and Speech Month in May by ensuring that local residents received the message about hearing loss, loud and clear.
“Our goal is to help improve a patient’s quality of life, to restore their ability to communicate,” said Clint Snedegar, a board-certified hearing instrument specialist at Avada. “I don’t think anyone should have to live with hearing loss.”
Better Hearing and Speech Month provided Snedegar, who has worked as an HIS in Mount Vernon for 14 years, just one more excuse to talk to his patients about solutions to hearing loss.
“The purpose of Better Hearing and Speech Month is to raise awareness through eduction. We want people to know that we can help figure out if they have a hearing problem, and that we can help figure out the best solution,” he said.
Avada offers free hearing screenings throughout the year, and no fewer than 40 visitors have stopped by the clinic for such screenings this month.
According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, which first recognized May as Better Hearing and Speech Month in 1927, an estimated 28 million Americans suffer from hearing loss. Those afflicted range from young children to retired baby boomers.
Hearing loss has a number of causes, including exposure to excessive noise, physical trauma to the head or ear, infections, birth defects and age.
“My wife told me I was turning up the television too loud, and I noticed I was having trouble hearing during conversations,” said Rod McMillan, a Mount Vernon resident whose hearing loss was caused, at least in part, by the noisy conditions in the factory where he worked for years.
McMillan first sought treatment about five years ago. He now wears a hearing device in each ear.
“The first time I put them in I noticed a big difference,” he said.
Although hearing loss is popularly associated with old age, Snedegar said his patients span the generation spectrum.
“The days are gone when people say, ‘I’m not old enough to wear a hearing instrument.’ Now people in their 40s and 50s regularly use them,” he said.
Despite changes in public perception — not to mention technology that makes many hearing devices almost invisible — many people are still reluctant to get help. According to Snedegar, those suffering from hearing loss wait an average of seven years between the time they recognize their problem and the time they finally seek treatment.
“I’ve had patients whose hearing loss was contribuing to marital problems. One patient was suffering anxiety attacks and depression. My hat is off to people who have to deal with hearing loss every day, but I don’t think anyone should have to go through that,” Snedegar said.
Many kinds of hearing loss are treatable. Sensorineural loss of hearing, which is caused by damage to the inner ear, can often be treated with hearing devices. Conductive loss of hearing, which is caused by damage to the outer or middle ear, is more frequently treated with medicine or surgery.
Snedegar said that 90 percent of all hearing loss is sensorineural, and that roughly 60 percent of the people who visit Avada for a free screening end up pursuing solutions of one kind or another.
Even if Avada didn’t experience a spike in the number of people coming in for free screenings, Snedegar said Better Hearing and Speech Month was still a sucess.
“We do see a spike in people’s awareness of problems related to hearing loss,” he said.
