Both hard of hearing patients and audiologists have been challenged to avoid COVID-19 these days. Fortunately, technology has met the challenge by enabling audiologists to communicate with their patients via telehealth.
If you, like many other hearing aid wearers, are affected by a build-up of ear wax in your hearing aid or your ear, you need to get rid of it. Prior to the onset of the Covid-19 virus, you would visit your hearing aid supplier’s office, which would clean both the hearing aid and your ears. But these days you can’t visit your hearing aid supplier’s office. You probably can, perhaps with the aid of a magnifying glass and a thin wire or perhaps a paper clip, rid the hearing aid of the wax. But you will very likely not be able to get rid of the wax in your ear safely (doctors advise against the use of Q-tips). We recently heard of a product that may be useful for getting the wax out of your ear, Q-Twists. However, it is not universally loved by doctors and buyers. We have just ordered one and will report on our own results later.
Sudden sensorineural hearing loss is a rare disorder where the patient can go deaf within several days. Unfortunately, the Coronavirus outbreak has led to a dramatic slowdown of patient recruitment and a reprioritization of hospital resources.