Adult Onset Hearing Loss: Current Trends and Emerging Technologies

Dr. Douglas Sladen, Assistant Professor, Communication Sciences & Disorders

Fall 2018

Dr. Sladen's talk reviews the underlying causes of age-related hearing loss. Dr. Sladen shares new findings from the United States and worldwide that demonstrate the devastating effects of hearing loss. He also shares exciting data that are important for managing cases of severe hearing loss.

Dr. Sladen has worked as a clinician, researcher, and professor in Audiology for the past 23 years. He finished an M.A. in Audiology from WWU in 1994, and then worked as a Pediatric Audiologist at the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center in Nashville, TN. He spent the following three years working as a clinic specialist with Advanced Bionic Corporation before heading back to Vanderbilt University for his Ph.D. He completed his doctoral work at Vanderbilt University in 2006, where he stayed on as a Research Assistant Professor for two years. He then joined the faculty at UT Austin for three years. From 2011 to 2017, he was the Director of the Mayo Clinic Cochlear Implant Program. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. His research is centered on the speech perception abilities of children and adults with cochlear implants; an auditory prosthetic used to manage severe hearing loss. Specifically, Dr. Sladen’s work examines outcomes following cochlear implantation and methods that can be used to improve overall hearing performance.

Date of Lecture