Friday 26 November 2010

Let it Snow....

Quietish week, snow falling as I type.

Success in getting DS to move to a Moxi 3G from her Fuse/Alera: seems to be much better with the BTE aid and is happy that the occlusion 'clicking' is gone. The fact that the face-plate had detached on the fuse and she didn't appear to be getting much usable gain from the Alera is probably only part of the story.

Found out yesterday about the efficacy of the CENS noise plugs for those wearers with tinnitus who continue to shoot. If you turn them right up, you'll still have tinnitus. I suppose it's obvious to anybody from the outside, but there you go. Plan B might involve putting a set of cans over the top, but we'll see how the user does with just setting the volume control on about a quarter. He did say though that he reckoned his hearing was about the level of an Arctic Wolf, before firing a shotgun repeatedly next to his head.

Resound Be still causing failure issues. Not all the same variety though. Some are outright sensitivity issues from ingress at the receiver port, some receiver/output problems where the circuit just seems to go to white noise then off. Some seem to be related to the mic contacts on the  battery door. They have to do something about this for the customers. It's not right that a company can make such a poor hearing aid and get away with it.

Ah well, back to salting the pavements......

Friday 19 November 2010

Colder and wiser?

Looks like the weather and the economy is still keeping people at home, though there's some movement. Other markets don't seem quite so depressed, posting on Hearingaidforums.com seems to be as keen as ever, with positive reviews on the Phonak Spice and the Resound Alera.

I'm still battling to get much sense out of Resound,  which is a real shame, as the Alera seems well worth the money.

Mrs T's Tandem CROS appeared to go ok at her initial fitting,  but there are a couple of motivation issues to deal with. Like any CROS fitting, the mental plasticity and attitude of the wearer push the actual technology out of the limelight. We'll see how it goes.

First fittings of the Moxi 3Gs have been a bit of a success. Wearers reporting much 'brighter' performance than the old Moxi. The Udirect/UTv link has been a bit of a success too. This is surprising as the original uptake of the Udirect was relatively poor, however, having a proper 'docking station' sitting on the TV has resulted in a place-holder which people seem to equate much better with. Issue's with the 3Gs: one is the receiver configuration, which renders my older receiver stock redundant, except for replacement units on the older Moxi. Second is the socket location, which quite frankly is poor.


I'm in the process of writing-off the Fuse as a practical option in my fitting repertoire - they simply have too many reliability issues, as well as the 'splitting' issue.


Also fitting Mr. R with a new Widex M220-19, semi-soft moulds. Existing Widex user and I didn't really want the 'fight' over changing to another brand. Should be ready to run with moulds from next week or so. We'll see how the newer Widex product stacks-up against his Senso.

Monday 8 November 2010

A bit later this week....

....due to our Open Days at the centre.  Cawl was well received by everybody and there was quite a  bit of interest, despite being let down at the last minute by a couple of reps.

Unitron have launched their Udirect based UTV system, which looks like a docking station for the bluetooth device. This is handy as it gives the system a fixed charging location in people's houses as well as maximising the potential from the bluetooth based TV feed.

We fitted a new Moxi 3G Latitude16  to an existing customer as an upgrade from a binaural Yuu. This seems to have gone down a treat, but he's having to wait on the delivery of the TV dock which is meant to be 10 days away. He seems to like the initial performance of the aids though and had no problem in pairing the U-direct with an I-Phone 4Gs.

Unitron were also keen to get a Tandem 16 CROS onto one of our customers who has a long standing perforation with effusion. (Mrs MT) She's due to be fitted next week to placate the her ENT specialist who is unhappy about her occluding the perf'd ear.

Fuse failures are dogging the process a little, especially since Sonova accounting doesn't seem to understand the principle of holding stock. Getting twatty about the account, when the stuff is unsaleable due to repeat return failures is just not on. Hopefully Chris/Nic. will sort this out, otherwise I'll be looking for a different supplier again.