What you need to know before buying hearing aids
Hearing aids can’t restore perfect hearing. They help you use the hearing you have left to improve your speech understanding. They make sound louder so that you can hear it, but will not necessarily always make everything clear.
Hearing aids will benefit most people with a hearing loss, but any clinician or company that promises to give perfect hearing is giving you unrealistic expectations. Remember when you are buying a hearing aid you are buying a process and not a product.
Things you need to consider if you are thinking of getting a hearing aid
If you think you have a hearing loss, see your ENT specialist or audiologist. They will check your ears to see if you need further medical examination or treatment.
Be very wary of responding to adverts offering
free or cheap listening devices, or information on better hearing. Some companies use high pressure selling
tactics and may try to sell you expensive hearing aids.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions, and you
can request for quotations before you decide to purchase. A good practice will explain the nature of
your hearing loss and will emphasise the necessity of habilitation and make
provision for review after fitting of hearing aids.
Seeing an Audiologist
Whether you visit the Audiologist / Hearing
Care Professional, or are visited by them in your home, you may want to have
someone with you for support and to make sure you don’t mishear something. Good practices will recommend this.
If you know someone who has bought a
hearing aid, ask them if they would recommend the clinician they dealt
with. What was the back-up service
like? Remember that their hearing loss
is unlikely to be the same as yours, so their hearing aid may not necessarily
be the right one for you.
Check that you will be able to contact them easily In the future. You will need to be able to see them if you have a problem with your hearing aids and need to get them adjusted, repaired or serviced.
What happens when I see the Audiologist or
Hearing Care Professional?
You hearing will be assessed (with puretone
audiometry).
An air conduction hearing test: In the
test, you can listen to tones through the headphones and respond to the sounds
presented by audiologist by pressing a response button.
A bone conduction hearing test: In this test, you wear a special headband that conducts sound through the bones of your skull. When the results are compared with what you heard through the headphones in the air conduction test, they show whether you have a problem with your eardrum or middle ear. You will get your results in an audiogram. This is a graph that shows how well you hear low, middle and high tones.
Once your hearing has been tested, a discussion will follow as to which kind of hearing aid will be best for you. Most people benefit from wearing a hearing aid in each ear, rather than just one. Ask for information about all the different types of aids that might suit you and their prices. Be wary if you are not given any choices.
If you decide to buy hearing aids, impressions of your ear will be taken. The impressions will be sent to hearing lab for the earmould production, or the casing (for in-the-ear hearing aids). When they are ready, you will need another visit to the hearing centre. This is to have the hearing aids fitted and programmed to suit your hearing loss and explanation as to how to use it.
After-care appointments should be arranged after fitting of your hearing aids. It is important that you keep to these appointments, as it may be necessary to adjust or fine-tune the hearing aids for you to get the best results from your system.
It is important that trained Audiologist / Hearing Care Professional carry out audiological assessments and the prescribing and fitting of hearing aids. This is necessary to ensure that a treatable medical condition, or a medical condition which requires intervention, is not missed. It also ensures that safe impression-taking procedures are utilized and appropriate amplification is prescribed following audiometric evaluation so as not to put at risk the patient’s residual hearing.
