Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery
Audiology
It’s simple: we want you to hear better. Keeping your hearing healthy allows you to stay engaged in your daily life. It's an essential part of life, one that not only has an impact on you, but can also affect those around you. When there is a change in your hearing or the hearing of a loved one, it is our job to partner with you to find the right solution.
Resources for People with Hearing LossWe Start By Understanding Your Needs
The first step is a Communication Needs Assessment, when an audiologist will connect your listening needs with your hearing loss to offer a variety of options to help. This is an important step because communication needs can be as unique as your hearing, and discussing all options that are applicable to you will ensure you can make the best decision for what you want to do. Our audiologists and other clinical colleagues determine the right diagnosis and recommend the right rehabilitative and support services. A hearing test (audiogram) may be performed as part of this process to obtain a detailed evaluation of your hearing ability. Together, we can feel confident in the best personalized course of action.
Our Products and Services
When we provide your care, we will orient you to your hearing products, ensuring you can take advantage of all the features they provide. Our specialists will make sure they are physically comfortable, sometimes customizing based on your ear’s shape. Using state-of-the-art tools, we will optimize sounds. We will also provide communication counseling to help you achieve your hearing goals, and troubleshoot and repair any problems you may have. The devices we service include:
- Hearing aids: medical electronic devices that can be worn either in or behind your ear. They can help improve how you hear and communicate.
- Consumer hearing devices: devices that are intended to amplify sounds in the environment that can be purchased without a formal hearing evaluation.
- Cochlear implants: surgical devices that can be considered when hearing aids are not able to make sounds loud and clear enough.
- Bone conduction devices: surgical or non-surgical devices that can help improve hearing for people who have problems with their outer or middle ear(s) or no hearing in one ear.
- Auditory brainstem implants: surgical devices for rare cases when the nerve is not healthy.
Resources for Patients and Families
COVID-19 Resources for People with Hearing Loss
Click here to find information and resources to help you navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic with hearing loss, including:
- Device safety and face masks
- Communication and face masks
- Webinar: Navigating COVID-19 with Hearing Loss
- Apps that can help improve access to communication immediately
COVID-19 Resources for Students with Hearing Loss and Teachers
Click here to find information and resources for students, parents and teachers, including techniques to minimize the impact of mask wearing, as well as how to create an online learning environment to best support student success.
In order to help us serve you, please feel free to try these two resources:
- The CEDRA questionnaire was developed by Northwestern University. It was designed to help adults decide if they need to see a physician through a series of questions about their hearing. Our Audiology Department is tightly integrated into our Otology Department. If the results of the CEDRA indicate that your hearing loss could be caused by something that requires medical attention, our physicians are available to see you.
- hearWHO is a free self-hearing test app you can download (iOS and Android) released by the World Health Organization. It was designed to help you keep track of your hearing over time and let you know if you should see an audiologist for diagnostic testing using calibrated equipment in a sound-treated room.
If you have any questions or concerns about your hearing, no matter your scores, you should contact a hearing doctor (physician or audiologist).
Please bring any relevant records you already have such as hearing tests or speech-language evaluations. For cochlear implant users, you can ask the clinic you’re coming from to email the programs from their clinic. Having this information will save time and help our audiologists make a more informed diagnosis and give you better care.
Have You Heard? Seminar
To help you learn more about hearing loss, we host annual seminars on the topic, which are designed to help you preserve your senses and live a healthier life. Learn more about our 2019 Have You Heard? event.
Tinnitus Seminar
At this seminar, we talked all things tinnitus, or "ringing of the ears." Physical therapists, chiropractors, audiologists, sleep specialists, dentists, and mental health workers were all in attendance to answer frequently asked questions about this condition. View videos from our 2017 Tinnitus Seminar.
Information about hearing loss in children
10 signs that your child may have a hearing loss
Boystown National Research Hospital
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Healthy Hearing
Co-amplify
Organizations mostly for people (or families of people) with hearing loss
Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
American Society for Deaf Children
Association of Late-Deafened Adults
Hearing Loss Association of America
Hearing Rehabilitation Foundation
Mass. Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
National Association for the Deaf
Organizations mostly for hearing loss research
Hearing Health Foundation
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
Organizations mostly for hearing loss professionals
American Academy of Audiology
American Doctors of Audiology
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
Massachusetts Academy of Audiology
Massachusetts Speech-Language Hearing Association
Organizations about noise protection
National Hearing Conservation Association
Local professional educational programs
Harvard-MIT Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology (SHBT)
Meet Our Team
From routine hearing tests to complex hearing loss solutions, our team of specially trained audiologists and technicians have one goal in mind: to improve your hearing. Seeing patients of all ages, we can help people with any kind of hearing problem stay connected to those they love.
