Helping You Hear Better!
HEARING AIDS
Hearing aids today offer such a wide variety of choices in style, circuit types and features that settling on the best one for you can often be a rather confusing process. Your audiologist will assess your own individual communication needs and provide you with information on what is available to help you. However you must be actively involved in the choice. You will need to decide which aspect of using hearing aids is most important to you: hearing benefit, appearance, or cost.
Among the choices you’ll have are the following:
STYLES OF HEARING AIDS
- Behind-the-ear (BTE)
- In-the-ear (ITE)
- Canal
- Completely-in-canal (CIC)
ONE OR TWO AIDS
Unless you have one ear that is either normal or profoundly impaired or unaidable, you’ll be much happier with two hearing aids.
- Listening with both ears is a more natural way to listen. Sounds will have a greater depth and definition, and a better quality.
- Less power is needed when using two hearing aids.
- Sound localization will be greatly improved over monaural listening.
- Most importantly, you’ll be better able to sort sounds. This means significantly better understanding for speech in noise.
DIRECTIONAL MICROPHONES
- Undoubtedly the single most effective result of the hearing aid industry’s marathon efforts to allow listeners to understand speech better in noisy environments.
- Helps you "focus" your hearing on whatever you are facing by reducing the intensity of sounds from the sides and the rear.
PROGRAMMABLE OR NON-PROGRAMMABLE
- Computer programmable hearing aids are far more flexible than non-programmables. Your aids can be "tuned" more precisely to meet your specific, individual amplification needs.
- Programmable aids are available with two or more channels, allowing individual settings for different parts of the frequency range.
- Programmable aids are available with two or more programs, giving you the opportunity to change your hearing aid to adapt to changing communication needs in changing listening environments.
ANALOG OR DIGITAL
- Digital aids utilize a technology that produces crisper and cleaner sound. There is an increased flexibility and speed of sound processing over analog aids.
FEATURES
A myriad of features are available to further individualize and personalize hearing aids. These include several different circuit types, compression of many different configurations, dispenser and user-operated controls, features to allow connection to group amplifying systems, and telephone amplifiers.
Confused? Remember, any hearing aid is just what its name implies: an aid to help you hear better. Whatever your choice, your hearing will still be less than perfect. How much improved it is will depend to a great extent on the appropriateness of your choice in selecting hearing aids. We’re here to help you make the very best decision, and to be your support system for the lifetime of your hearing aids.
