Tips to buy perfect hearing aid for you!

There is lot of awareness about hearing aids now a days. You will see many advertisements about different hearing aids all over the newspapers, internet and social media sites. It has both positive and negative effect on people. They surely desensitized the masses about the hearing aids, but it has also seeped a feeling that hearing aids is like any other electronic product that you can buy online or visiting a store.

First and foremost, HEARING AIDS are just not any electronic amplifiers that can be purchased from anywhere and used. They are sophisticated Medical Equipements like your pacemaker, your spectacles or blood sugar monitoring devices. They should be purchased after the advice and under the guidance of an audiologist. There is a process that should be followed while buying a hearing aid, so that you get the maximum benefit of the device you are opting for.

1. Hearing Assessment:

Regular monitoring of your hearing can tell you when your hearing has started to decline. Like in any other treatment, early intervention plays a very important role in hearing loss also.

Click here to know about early intervention in hearing loss.

Hearing Assessment includes a series of interviews and tests to assess the type and severity of hearing loss and how hearing loss is affecting your lifestyle and daily routines.

Following are the steps during hearing assessment:

• Case History: A detailed case history regarding the onset and cause of hearing loss, co-morbities and associated health conditions that may affect the consequences of hearing loss are noted down by an audiologist.

• Lifestyle Assessment: Through set of questionnaires, an audiologist tries to understand, your listening needs and area where he has to work to provide the best solution.

• Hearing Testing: An audiologist performs few tests that provides him knowledge about both anatomical and physiological aspect of hearing loss. Through series of hearing tests like pure tone audiometry (PTA), Speech Audiometry and tympanometry, he understands what's going on inside your body and why you are having hearing problems.

2. Hearing Device Selection: After all these investigations, your audiologist will discuss about different treatment options with you. In most permanent hearing loss, such as sensorineural hearing loss or long-standing conductive hearing loss that cannot be treated through medicinal or surgical treatments are advised to go for hearing devices. Your ENT also plays an important role in deciding about the treatment options.

There are different kinds of devices for different hearing problems, Hearing aids are the being the most popular and widely used hearing device. Others are bone conduction hearing devices, cochlear implants and CROS devices.

The Hearing devices are generally selected on the following criteria:

1. Type and Severity of Hearing loss

2. Duration of hearing loss

3. Listening environment of the listener

4. Ease of use

5. Dexterity issues

6. Any specific memory related issue

7. Cosmetic appeal of the device

As like any medicine, hearing aids are also prescribed. Hearing aids are chosen according to the specific needs of the patients. Each patient may have different requirements. The same hearing aid may not benefit equally to all patients. So, if you friend is using 'X' hearing aid and he is happy with it, it is not necessary that you also get similar satisfaction with the same hearing aid. So, don't be a part of rat race and choose wisely after consultation with an audiologist.

Remember, a good hearing aid will make your life easy, if you have to spend a few extra bucks for better technology, don't hesitate.

3. Hearing Aid Fitting: As hearing aids are customized, according to your hearing loss and your ear size, it is very much necessary to check all the parameters at the time of fitting. Audiologists are trained to provide the best experience during the first fit.

The things that should be checked during the fitting are:

• Fit of the hearing aid: whether it is going comfortably in your ear, it is not causing any pain, whether you are able to comfortable use it.

• Any discomfort in sound: you should tell your audiologist about any discomfort you are feeling during the time of fitting.

As, hearing aids are electronic devices and programmed according to your hearing loss, there are chances that you may hear all sounds as mechanical or like "coming from a microphone".

There are also chances that environmental sounds may sound overwhelmingly loud. But keep patience, it is just a matter of a few days, your auditory system will adapt to all these sounds in a few days.

If you still feel discomfort from sounds, then it means that you have chosen a wrong hearing aid for yourself, you might require a better noise reduction and sound filter technologies. Never shy from telling how feel from the hearing aids. Your audiologist will help you to provide better hearing aid technology.

A professional and experienced audiologist will always guide you about the use, safety and care and maintenance of hearing aids. They will also perform few tests like Real Ear measurements or Aided audiometry to verify the fit they have provided to you.

3. After Sales Services:

This is where most of your amount of hearing aids purchase goes. As hearing aids are very delicate electronic pieces, they require regular servicing, fine tuning and maintenance. Your audiologist will periodically check you hearing and do the required fine-tuning to your hearing aids. He will clean and check the hearing aids periodically. Mostly a very basic or no service package is provided with hearing aids with high discount or on sale. Please ask your audiologist to provide at least 5 years of comprehensive services.

Hope this will help you to decide about the best hearing aid for yourself. You can connect with us at unicareshc@gmail.com. All queries are welcomed.

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Lovedeep Kholia, M.Sc, Audiology

Mr. Lovedeep Kholia, has vast experience in audiology practice. He has been heading Audiology Department of Unicare Speech & Hearing Clinic from past six years and he is working towards spreading awareness regarding hearing loss and its treatment.