What is a hearing aid?
Project Description
Hearing aids have changed a lot.
How they look (they’re way smaller) and what they can do (they’re pretty smart) are very different than even a few years ago.
Hearing aid is a small electronic device that helps people with many types of hearing loss. It amplifies and alters sounds to make up for damaged or non-working parts of the ear. All hearing aids work by making sounds louder. Many types also change sounds, like background noise, so that other sounds, like speech, are easier to understand. Hearing aids work best for people with mild to severe hearing loss where speech understanding is still good. Hearing aids may not work well for people with severe to profound loss. When hearing aids no longer provide adequate benefit a cochlear implant should be considered. When a patient has conductive or mixed hearing loss or single-sided deafness a Baha® system should be considered. If you are interested in learning more about hearing aids, contact one of our outlets now.
What can hearing aids do?
- Noise reduction
- Speech enhancement
- Multiple listening program
- Wireless synchronization
- Feedback management
- Automatic program switching
Hearing aids are getting smarter. Undoubtedly the most important thing a hearing aid does is still amplifying, but in a variety of ways, hearing aids are getting better at doing that.
What can’t hearing aids do?
- Hearing aids do not “fix” hearing loss
- not like glasses
- external amplifier has to go through “bad” ear
- Restore hearing after wearing it for a period of time
- Totally eliminate background noise while enhancing speech
- Make you hear as natural as you did before the hearing impairment
It helps you to hear better but not in the sense of understanding speech perfectly.