Audiologist Gregory Oja, president of Renaissance Hearing Centers Inc., attended in late February the 2012 Upper Midwest Audiology Conference in Bloomington.
Bemidji-based Renaissance Hearing Centers has a branch office in International Falls, located in the Rainy Lake Medical Center Hospital Campus, providing audiological evaluations and follow-up care.
Oja and other audiologists receive credit toward audiology certification for attending educational conferences. Certification is renewed every three years. About 100 audiologists and students from the Midwest attended the conference.
Oja also attended a workshop prior to the conference to examine the issue of how hearing aid fitting is associated with rewiring of the brain.
“Just fitting hearing aids and getting the sound adjusted to a comfortable level during the 45-day initial fitting period is not adequate for maximum benefit over the long-term,” Oja said, adding that amplified sounds received from hearing aids, over time, form new neural associations within the brain. “We must see people back several times during the first year as the neural mechanism reorganizes to make adjustments to the amplification.”
Renaissance Hearing Centers, which was founded in 1979 in Bemidji, has evolved to emphasize hearing rehabilitation, including work with hearing aids. Oja purchased the company in 1986, and offices in International Falls and Walker opened in 1998.
