tinnitus Help On Hearing Rating

[mssoup1]

My husband recently had a C & P exam for tinnitus. This included a hearing exam due to the fact that he is already 0% service connected for hearing loss. The examiner told him that his hearing, especially in one ear, had gotten worse since his last exam. These were the results:

Right ear: 500 Hz = 15 dB

1000 Hz = 25 dB

2000 Hz = 25 dB

3000 Hz = 50 dB

4000 Hz = 55 dB

right ear average: 39 dB

Left ear: 500 Hz = 20 dB

1000 Hz = 25 dB

2000 Hz = 30 dB

3000 Hz = 65 dB

4000 Hz = 75 dB

left ear average: 49 dB

Speech Recognition Scores: 82% for the right ear and 84% for the left ear.

Does this qualify him for a rating higher than 0%?

Thanks

[nlualum82]

According to the charts I refer to in the CFR, those numbers still rate 0%.

He can be thankful that he can hear that well, and keep monitoring it.

I have gone from 0% to 50% over 27 1/2 years. Hearing has a way of declining with age, which is not factored by theVA. I personally believe that some ears are easier to damage than others ( things like ear canal size, flexibility, etc) and that you then have the ears naturally declining by the adaptation mechanism (look up recruitment, for instance) as well as not protecting them as you should because you're not aware that a noise is too loud. I have gotten some bad headaches from noise I couldn't hear! My audiologist says I should wear hearing protectors at work to ward off damage in the noisy environment - my ears are being ruined by noise that is pretty faint to me! It is almost masked by my tinnitus!

I also must communicate at work, we work the machines in pairs + the supervisors are constantly giving you orders, soooo on top of it all, I'm amplifying sound with my hearing aids!

27 years of ratings came about pretty haphazardly. I missed 9 years of payments before going back and getting 20%, meaning there was some period of time I should've been 10%.

It was 11 years after that when an audiologist said I was significantly worse than my records and guided me to a C & P where I ws awarded 40%. Obviously I would've tested at 30% some time in the interim and would have picked up the extra for my dependents sooner.

Have they offered you hearing aids? If so, take them, good sometime for watching TV with a group or going to a movie, gives you some control over volumes you can't adjust at the source.

The last movie I saw at a theatre was "The Passion of the Christ" - finally captions! I have given up on any kind of amplification for viewing and rely strictly on captions for tv, and see movies after they've gone to captioned DVD's.

Check out the CFR , title 38, part 4, subpart 4. Print out the charts (table VI, VIA, and VII) and the instructions under "4.85 Evaluation of hearing impairment" and check every hearing test you have from now on against it. This should tell you when to request a C & P.

Gary

[mssoup1]

Thanks for the reply.

The audiologist during his C & P exam for tinnitus told him that based on our converstation, that it appeared his hearing had gotten worse, expecially in one ear. Therefore, she wanted to retest him. He has had hearing aides for quite some time now, but due to his service connected skin condition, he cannot wear them but so long before he has to take them out because his ears itch so bad. Due to this problem, they have recently sent them off in order to put some type of a covering or something on the part that goes into his ear. They said that this should help with the itching that is occuring. The audiology department has been super in working with both him and I on his hearing problem.

I didn't think that the new hearing results would put him high enough for a rating higher than 0%, but wanted to make sure since he just had a new test performed.

Thanks again