Hearing Aids Performance: A Work In Progress

Hearing aids are only as useful to their wearers as the quality of their performance. And, like that of any other electronic device, hearing aids performance can be influenced by a wide number of factors.

When you’re first tested and fitted for your hearing aids, your audiologist will measure the hearing aids performance over a number of sound frequencies and against a variety of backgrounds. This will ensure that your hearing aids performance is optimized for as wide a range of environments as possible.

The manufacturer of your hearing aids will adjust their programming to the setting recommended by your audiologist, and when you receive them, your hearing aids performance will be dictated by those factory settings. But things might have changed between the time you were tested and the time you actually received your hearing aid, so your hearing aids performance may not be what you had anticipated.

This is perfectly normal, especially for hearing aids users who are switching from analog hearing aids to digital hearing aids. So if you’re having trouble with you hearing aids performance, your audiologist will want to know about it.

Finding The Problem

Your audiologist will first re-test your hearing to see if it has changed at all since the earlier tests, and may account for your dissatisfaction with your hearing aids performance. If your hearing is the same, the audiologist will next examine the hearing aids themselves for faulty parts and programming, or physical damage.

If the unsatisfactory hearing aids performance is due to a change in your hearing, the audiologist can reprogram them; if the hearing aids are adjustable, you may be able to fine tune them yourself with help from the manufacturer’s instructions.

Realizing There’s A Problem

Many people, especially first-time hearing aids users, will simply go through life with poor hearing aids performance because they do not know how very well the current state-of-the-art hearing aids are capable of performing. Whistling from feedback and background noises which make conversation impossible to hear are no longer acceptable in hearing aids.

The performance of your hearing aids can deteriorate over time, even if they worked perfectly when you first got them. This can happen because they need a good cleaning, or because your batteries are getting low, but the biggest concern is that your hearing is continuing to change.

So even after you get your hearing aids, you need to continue seeing your audiologist for periodical hearing tests, so that the programming of your hearing aids will continue to match your changing hearing needs.

By: David Faulkner

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