Speaker 1: Is there someone in your life that you've noticed isn't hearing as well as they used to? Many people, especially as they age, experience some level of hearing loss, but they may not be aware of it or they're not willing to acknowledge it, especially over the phone. They may try to guess what's said or just stop talking on the phone altogether because it's too hard to keep asking callers to repeat themselves. Fortunately, there's a free service designed to help. It's like closed captions we see on our TV, but for your phone, and here to tell us more are Barbara Dreyfuss, VP of Marketing from CapTel, and Dr. Patricia Ramos, Director of Audiology and Rehabilitative Services at ENT Hearing Associates of South Florida, and we are so happy to have you in our studio today. Thank you. Happy to be here. That's great. Now, I want to start with some statistics. 48 million Americans have a significant hearing loss. It's the third most prevalent health issue in older adults after arthritis and heart disease. By age 65, one out of three people has a hearing loss, increasing to nearly one in two by age 75, but it's not just older adults. One in five teens has some degree of hearing loss, so hearing loss is more common than most people may realize, and Dr. Ramos, let's talk about those stats, and what do you see in your patients?

Speaker 2: Well, unfortunately, most people know that they have hearing loss for five to seven years before they seek help, and most of the time, they are told that they're having difficulty communicating by family and friends. And would you say that hearing loss, when you look at your patients, affects their mental health as well? Absolutely. Not only from observation, but there's been a lot of research that's come out of John Hopkins and a lot of the medical facilities that are talking about the actual impact of hearing loss on depression, dementia, a number of different things. So it's really something that we need to be paying attention to.

Speaker 1: And this is really where CAPTEL comes in, right, Barbara?

Speaker 3: Yes, definitely. CAPTEL stands for Caption Telephone, and it's a service that we developed because we recognize that people, as they lose their hearing, kind of retreat from interacting with friends and family on the telephone. They lose their job sometimes. They're not able to kind of stay in the world the way they always did. Caption Telephone allows them to make a phone call like they always did, pick up the handset of the phone, read the words that are said to them, and hear it at the same time, along with amplification. Has it really affected your patients, doctor?

Speaker 2: It's really been an amazing addition to our practice. And for patients, we communicate on the phone all the time. And when you have a hearing loss, that's one of the most difficult environments to communicate on is the phone, because you can't see the person that you're speaking to. So the captioning on the phone is something that does allow them to read what they don't hear.

Speaker 1: And Barbara, the thing that I can't believe is that this doesn't cost anything. This is free.

Speaker 3: How does that work? It's provided by the federal government. The FCC monitors it, allows people who have hearing loss to get the phone free with certification from an audiologist, and allows them to get the phone and access the service anywhere in the United States.

Speaker 1: And doctor, tell me about the reaction from your patients. What's it been like?

Speaker 2: Well, there's nothing more rewarding than having patients and their family members come in and talk about how they've been able to reconnect to life through using CapTel.

Speaker 3: Barbara, any final thoughts from you? It's the most wonderful thing to see somebody reconnect to people on the phone, to say, wow, I haven't talked to this person for 10 years. It makes families closer. It allows children not to worry about their adult parents. And where can our audience go to find out more?

Speaker 1: They can go to CapTel.com. And also, you can go to TheBalancingAct.com because we're going to have all the information there for you as well. Thank you, ladies, so much for joining us. What a great device. I'm so excited to know what's out there in the marketplace. Thank you.

Speaker 3: Great to have you. Thank you.