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Success with Hearing Aids

You hold the key to hearing aid success. You must be motivated to change your behavior and try something new.

Most people with significant hearing impairments benefit from hearing aids with proper guidance in their selection and use.

Keys to hearing aid success:

  1. Early diagnosis
  2. Patient motivation
  3. Proper selection and fitting of hearing aids
  4. Hearing aid adjustment

Three important questions must be answered:

  1. Do you feel that you have a listening or communication problem?
  2. Do you want to improve your listening ability?
  3. Are you willing to try hearing aids?

If answers to these questions are yes, recommendation of hearing aids is appropriate.

Hearing aid expectations:
Today’s hearing aids are highly sophisticated, technical devices. With the recent advances in hearing aid technology and the increased knowledge and skills of those professionals prescribing hearing aids, there are very few hearing impaired individuals who cannot benefit from the use of hearing aids.

  • Hearing aids will not give you normal hearing. However, they can help you to compensate for your loss.
  • The current generation of hearing aids can do much more than just amplify sound. They can be constructed with the ability to filter background noise, change tonal quality, and modify the amount of power being delivered so as to control the loudness of environmental sound. With realistic expectations on your part, these technical advances make hearing aids more effective than ever.
  • Hearing aids are not a replacement for normal hearing. If you have that expectation, you will probably be disappointed. However, in most cases, hearing aids will improve your ability to hear and discriminate sounds in various listening situations.
  • Benefit will vary according to the individual. Unless the impairment has been neglected too long or is exceptionally unusual, you can have improved hearing performance. As a general rule the greater the hearing loss, the greater the need for a hearing aid. But, degree of hearing loss is far from being the whole story.

Are there some people who can’t benefit from hearing aids?

  • The key is not the type of hearing loss a person has, but its severity. Some people’s hearing losses are so far gone that no matter how much sound intensity is directed into their ears, there’s not enough hearing left to respond.
  • Other persons have trouble understanding speech because of neurological problems of the brain, rather than ear disorders. These are called central hearing impairments. They do not characteristically show any loss of hearing sensitivity (unless, of course, their condition exists simultaneously with an identifiable hearing impairment). Once the neural pathways within the central auditory system are affected with this condition, certain listening behaviors are usually permanently affected. Damage to these areas can result in an impairment of the ability to perceive and attend to speech in difficult listening situations. Hearing aids, while still beneficial, will not help them as much as they would other, more common type losses.
  • In rare cases, some hearing aid systems may distort normal sounds to the extent that amplification offers only louder distortion of what they already hear.
  • Some people have loudness tolerance problems that may put too great a limit on the level of amplification that can be expected.

Your Circumstances:
The urgency of your response to diminished hearing depends, of course, on your circumstances.

Sometimes, regrettably, as we advance in age, we adapt to hearing loss by restricting our activities and staying at home; we may resist returning to a world that is perceived as noisy and distracting. At home, we can control television or radio volumes and can ask others to repeat themselves or speak more distinctly.

The longer we ignore amplification, the more difficult adjustment will be when hearing aids are eventually worn.

How long should I wait?
Is there any advantage to waiting until your hearing loss is “severe enough” before getting hearing aids? No, just the opposite.

Wearing hearing aids in the early stages of hearing loss will make it easier for you to get accustomed to the somewhat changed sound that hearing aids produce. Also, hearing aids will help you to recapture certain words that have probably become less and less distinct as your hearing has deteriorated. The higher-pitched sounds are the first to fade, including consonants life s, f, and sh. It’s like reading a newspaper and having those letters missing. If your hearing loss becomes more severe, it may possibly even distort your speech.

Also, learning to live with hearing aids before it is absolutely necessary is to avoid making a nuisance of yourself. Wearing hearing aids is certainly preferable to constantly asking people to speak up or to repeat themselves. Remember, a hearing loss is more noticeable than hearing aids.

If you have a hearing loss, you still have some hearing left. That hearing is useable too! This remaining “residual hearing” is the solid foundation on which your future hearing happiness will be erected.

Contact Mark Glassman, and the team at Glassman's Hearing Aid Service.





Glassman's Hearing Aid Service
Omaha
3015 N 90th St
Ph. 402-571-1207

Fremont
33 W 6th
Ph. 402-727-7866

Featured Patient - Click here to animate

"My wife appreciates my hearing aids as much as I do. She claims it has helped my disposition. I know hearing aids have helped me enjoy my family and friends."

Chris Gutschow, Fremont, NE