Dr. Michael Schmidt, doctor of audiology, at Accura Audiology, says a lot of people will wait to get a hearing test. The numbers are that people will likely wait eight to ten years before stopping in and doing something about their hearing loss when they know they already have hearing loss He feels a big reason for that is that people feel they can manage mild to even moderate hearing loss on their own and they are living life just fine when it’s often the case that they are actually suffering more than they think.
When people to get tested, they come in, they go over the test and they will tell him they are hearing fine; they hear him fine, they can hear my spouse fine; they just are not hearing well in certain background noises or when I get into a crowd and that’s a really common complaint. Dr. Schmidt says then we test their hearing and put hearing aides on them and demonstrate the value of that. Dr. Mike says he had a patient last week who said she would have sworn that they heard him perfectly, but she goes on to say she was very wrong. It’s very common and he says he hears it all the time.
Dr. Schmidt says he tells people to come in for a baseline hearing test any time. He says we should look at it like our eyes. We get our eyes tested routinely and ears are no different. Hearing is a sense, a very important sense. Dr. Schmidt says he thinks people underestimate the value of good hearing and they don’t know that even a mild hearing loss can affect their relationships. He says it can affect your job, your earning potential and your overall enjoyment of life and when people finally do something about it, they tell him, they should have done something long ago and you can see the regret on their face.
716-500-HEAR (4327)
