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Southwestern Hearing Care
Hear What You
Can Do for Your
Hearing
H
earing loss is a personal journey,
one in which you feel no one can
relate to what you’re going through.
It’s a disability that Dr. Roger Angelelli of
Southwestern Hearing Care knows well; the
primary reason he got into the field was
because of his older sister, Joanne, being
born deaf.
“Our mother contracted German measles
when she was pregnant with Joanne, and
she was born with a congenital deafness as
a result,” Angelelli said. “I was fascinated with
the equipment doctors would bring to the
house to test her hearing.”
After graduating from Cal U, he went
to graduate school for audiology at West
Virginia University and the University of
Pittsburgh, and became more and more
interested in hearing loss caused in military
and industrial settings. He worked on a
study at WVU to determine the noise effects
on hearing that dental drills pose to the
dentists who use them day in and day out.
This expertise led him to found Audiometric
Baseline Consulting in 1979. In 1980, he
opened Southwestern Hearing Care, his
private practice devoted to helping people
from all walks of life understand and correct
their hearing loss.
“We basically offer six major brands of
hearing aids. Some people come in with
different models and we have the available
software and cords that go with them,” he
said. “By and large, however, most hearing
aids on the market today are wireless, but we
can program and reprogram all of them.”
Why that’s important is the fact that a
hearing aid doesn’t just make things louder, it
addresses the specific frequencies where your
hearing is deficient. Someone who worked
in a factory, for example, will have a different
hearing loss than someone who loses hearing
because of aging. After a diagnostic test
with Dr. Angelelli, your hearing loss will be
explained and the proper programming of
the hearing aid will be implemented. Many
of the newer models of hearing aids are also
Bluetooth compatible and have sophisticated
noise-canceling features to address feedback
issues. Dr. Angelelli noted, “From the days
of fine-tuning the ‘pots’ with a screwdriver
to the present programming of computer
software, the excitement of a person’s
awareness of life’s sounds again makes the
total effort worthwhile.”
He added, “A lot of people don’t
understand how decibels work. It’s maybe 85
decibels (dB) standing on a busy street corner
with buses going by. It might approach 85
dB in a subway station. You’re allowed to be
exposed to 90 dB for an 8-hour work period,
according to OSHA. Every 5 dB above that
requires a 50 percent reduction in exposure
time. And we’re surrounded by noise. A
stadium football game can easily reach 115
dB, and all it takes is more than 15 minutes at
115 dB to cause permanent hearing damage.
Once that happens, there’s no surgery that
can correct that problem.”
Perhaps the most important thing people
need to know about their hearing aids is that
they will not be a replacement for the natural
hearing that they lost.
“I try to present realistic expectations to my
patients and let them know that when they
put the aid on for the first time, their voice
will sound different, or there might be a slight
echo,” said Dr. Angelelli. “The brain needs to
Dr. Roger M Angelelli, Licensed Audiologist
reprocess the new sounds coming in, and
it’s not unusual that they aren’t recognizing
natural sound at first.”
When he’s not helping people hear again,
Dr. Angelelli is active playing racquetball and
attending weekly Rotary meetings, where he
helps collect and box food and clothing for
South Hills Interfaith Ministry. He also plays
baseball at the Pittsburgh Pirates Fantasy
Camp, where he’s a catcher. This year, the
fantasy camp will include playing a game
at PNC Park, something that Dr. Angelelli is
looking forward to like a kid on Christmas
morning.
For more information on Southwestern
Hearing Care, go to the website at
swhearingcare.com, or call directly at
412.831.0430 and make an appointment
today. Dr. Angelelli says his longtime office
staff members, Kelly Walton and Judi Wank,
not only make his life easier, but help to
make the lives of the patients easier as well:
“Without them, my office would be very
difficult to operate.”
The practice is conveniently located at
2754 South Park Road, Bethel Park, PA 15102.
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