Purchasing A Hearing Aid?

By Author: Linda Barton
Total Articles: 6
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Before you purchase a hearing aid, be sure to ask your audiologist the following questions:

Which features would be most valuable to me?

What constitutes the total price of the hearing aid? Do the benefits of the latest technical advancements outweigh the larger prices?

How long is the warranty? Can it be extended? Are upgrades and repairs included in the warranty?

What is the test period to trial the hearing aids? (Just about all makers provide a 30 - 60-days trial period that hearing aids may be taken back for a refund.) What fees will not be refunded if the hearing aid is brought back after the trial time period?

Can the audiologist provide adjustments and supply servicing and do small repairs? Will lender aids be supplied while repairs are being carried out?

What training does the audiologist give?

Recent forms of hearing aids

While their operation is different from hearing aids fitted externally, implantable hearing aids design increases the transmission of sound vibrations entering the inner ear. MEI (Middle ear) implants are micro devices connected to the bones of ...
... the middle ear. Rather than amplifying the sound travelling to the eardrum, the bones are moved by the MEI directly. Both techniques render the equivalent effect of enhancing sound vibrations moving into the inner ear so they can be detected by persons suffering nerve deafness.

Bone anchored hearing aids (BAHA) are little devices that are attached to the bones behind the ear. Theses devices transfer audio vibrations direct into the inner ear thru the skull, without entering the middle ear. In the main BAHAs are utilized by people that have middle ear problems or hearing loss restricted to one ear. Because an operation is involved to implant either one of these, many hearing specialists consider the benefits do not outweigh the risks.

Research currently underway on hearing aids

Methods are being well thought out by researchers to implement new signal processing strategies to hearing aid design. Signal processing represents the technique in use to alter normal audio waves to amplify sounds to best match the remaining hearing of a someone using a hearing aid. NIDCD funded researchers are also studying how to make hearing aids intensify language signals to help to improve understanding.

In addition, researchers are checking into the use of computer aided engineering in design and manufacturing more operational hearing aids. Researchers are also seeking methods to improve sound transmission to reduce feedback, noise interference and the blockage effect. More studies focus on the most beneficial methods to select and fit hearing aids to children and supplementary groups of people whose auditory ability is hard to test.

Other anticipated research concentrates upon applying lessons gained from animal cases to try and improve microphones used in hearing aids. NIDCD endorsed scientists are examining the tiny fly Ormia ochracea as they possess an ear structure that allows the fly to determine the origin of sounds easily. This fly possesses an ear structure that has being exploited by scientists as a model for designing lilliputian directional microphones to be implemented in hearing aids. The microphones amplify the audio starting from a particular focal point (generally the direction a person is facing), without the sounds that come in from different directions. Directional microphones have got fantastic promise in making it easier to hear a single conversation, even while besieged by additional voices and noises.