HIGH-TECH HEARING AIDS MAKING EARS YOUNGER

She delivers the words matter of factly: "It's cumulative. It's irreversible. It's permanent."

Clinical audiologist Ronna Fisher wants people to heed those blunt truths on hearing loss and quickly address any change in their hearing.

"If they don't, their hearing is going to deteriorate to a point where I can't help them anymore," said Fisher, who owns Hearing Health Centers in Naperville, Oak Brook and Chicago. "You don't lose your hearing overnight. It takes people 20 years to get that bad.

"The earlier you do something, the better, because then there's not such a vast difference between hearing and not hearing. If somebody waits until their hearing is down to 50 percent, and then I put hearing aids on them, they hear all the things they haven't heard in 15 or 20 years and they go nuts. It's very hard to adapt."

According to a 1993 survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 28 million people in the United States have impaired hearing, an increase of 14 percent since 1971. And in the next few decades that number is expected to grow substantially as more Americans live longer.

Though the largest group with hearing loss is age 65 to 75, area audiologists report a shift in recent years in the age of those seeking initial assistance.

"Typically, most of the patients I would see 10 years ago were 65 and older, but in the last five years there are much more people in their 50s," said Keith Melda, a clinical audiologist at the Elmhurst Clinic.

Fisher's centers also mirror that shift.

"Our patients are getting younger and younger," she said. "Where we used to first see people when they were in their 60s, we've begun to see more who are experiencing hearing loss in their 30s, 40s and 50s. And they are more willing to do something about it (than older patients had been) because their jobs may depend on it."

The growth of the Baby Boomers has paralleled an explosion of tools and playthings in society that throw out noise at decibels much higher than earlier generations were exposed to.

"People are much more social," Melda said. "They're going to sporting events, loud concerts and such things, and there is just much more noise in the environment. In the long run, it will catch up to you."

Fisher also believes the growth in the number of those with hearing loss and the growth of noise go hand in hand, with one-third of her patients reporting noise exposure as the cause for their hearing loss.

The difficult part may be getting away from dangerous noise. The 60 decibels projected by common speech is non-threatening. But, Fisher said, according to safety standards recently released by federal regulators, exposure to a source that generates 85 decibels of sound should be limited to eight hours.

"For every 5 decibels above that, you should halve the time you allow yourself to be exposed," Fisher said. "That means instead of being at a rock concert, which is over 120 decibels, for 2 1/2 hours, you should be there about 15 minutes." Every rock concert she ever attended, she said, aged her hearing about 2 1/2 years.

While the numbers of those experiencing hearing loss may be growing, they are not all rushing to get it back, Melda said.

"Of the millions of people with hearing loss, there are only about 2 million wearing hearing aids," he said. "There's a huge population that could really benefit from a hearing aid, but there's still a stigma associated with them--that they're too big and they make people feel old."

But today's hearing aids come in a range of sizes and can be as small as the size of a pistachio nut; they can be placed in the ear canal in a way that is almost undetectable.

Furthermore, new technology has improved the auditory possibilities of hearing aids, first with the computer-programmable hearing aids created eight years ago and then with digital hearing aids introduced less than two years ago.

Programmable aids allowed the audiologist to fine-tune each person's hearing aid to his or her lifestyle and do it in the office. Digital aids have vastly extended that flexibility. The aids are autonomous, adjusting their volume continuously to the environment.

"What's nice about the digital hearing aid is that it knows what is speech and what's not," Fisher said. "Once the hearing aid processes the sound coming into it, it says, `OK that fan blowing in the background or that vacuum cleaner running or whatever, that's not speech, I don't make that louder, I make it softer.' And it will suppress a sound if it gets loud enough."

The added benefits of digital come at a price. They typically cost $2,000 to $3,000 per ear, said Melda, while conventional hearing aids are $500 to $1,000.

For 55-year-old Barbara Jepson, the difference digital aids make in her life is worth the price.

"It was so frustrating before. I felt so stupid because I couldn't hear what people were saying or understand what was going on," said Jepson, who has worn hearing aids for 16 years and was fitted this year with digital ones. "And I would get uptight at work, because I have a computer with a printer and a fax machine right there and they all make noise. With the other aid, that noise would be magnified. I used to go into my office and turn off my hearing aid because my head was exploding.

"I used to hate going out in crowds."

She said the aid's real test came when she was sitting in the front row at a Chicago Blackhawks game.

"The players were bouncing off the glass and the noise was right there and I wasn't uncomfortable at all. This is the first hearing aid that's allowed that," Jepson said.

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