In these times, when there is lot of noise pollution, stress and lifestyle challenges, hearing loss has become the most common sensory loss in geriatric population.
There are no ways to regain the natural hearing in 95% of sensorineural hearing loss. In those cases, we have to rely on hearing aids for hearing properly. With the advancement in science and technology, hearing aids have become so advanced that it sometimes becomes better than the normal hearing person.
Hearing aid market is so vast, there are so many brands, there are so many providers, internet is full of advertisements about different brands. So whom to believe? What are the best ways to get the best hearing aids for ourselves? There are few tips that can help you to find the right pair of hearing aids for you.
FIND A GOOD AUDIOLOGIST:
Audiologist is a professional who assess and prescribe treatment options for your hearing problem. Audiologist are trained from different institutes and they carry either graduate degree(for e.g. BASLP in India), Post graduate degree (M.Sc Audiology/ MASLP in India) or doctorate(P.hd.) in Audiology. There are few diploma courses running, a diploma holder can do basic assessment of hearing but may not have competency in providing full audiological healthcare without the supervision of fully trained qualified audiologist.
As hearing aids are costly and sophisticated devices always rely on the services of fully trained qualified audiologist.
There are few chain of clinics running all around the country, but it is not necessary that if somebody is doing a lot of advertisement and promotions, it should have a good audiologist. Check the credentials of the clinic by yourself before going to any of the clinic.
Finding a good audiologist is like Half Battle Won.
HAVE PROPER DIAGNOSIS OF YOUR PROBLEM:
An audiologist can only fit good hearing aid if he has full information about your hearing loss. There are few tests that have now become important to assess the full hearing function. These are:
1. Pure Tone Audiometry: PTA is the most common hearing test and it sets basic for you hearing aid fitting. PTA gives us information about the minimal sensation level of your hearing i.e. how softly you can hear. There are few Special Tests like TDT and SISI that can help audiologist to assess the site of lesion and loudness growth.
2. Speech Audiometry : Mostly ignored but speech audiometry is most important in assessing the response of patient towards the speech. There different speech tests that can be conducted in day to day audiology assessment:
a. Speech Detection Threshold (SDT) : Also known as speech awareness thresholds (SAT), it determines the softest level at which you can detect speech.
b. Speech Identification Scores (SIS): Also known as Speech Discrimination Scores (SDS), it is a measure of how well you can understand speech at a comfortable level. It tells us about amount of auditory deprivation that has happened. It will help the audiologist in deciding the type and technology level of hearing aid required by the client.
Speech Audiometry also helps us in determining if there is any retrocochlear component is present or not.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT HEARING AID:
It is the most important task of whole exercise. As this is most important part, you need to be fully attentive and well informed, If you are tired of the whole testing process, you can schedule a appointment with your audiologist for some other day to discuss on the hearing aids.
First step in choosing a hearing aid is the lifestyle assessment. Lifestyle assessment is simply a questionnaire regarding your listening needs, how much you require to be in different conditions, different levels of noise near you and how many people you have to interact with at once.
Your lifestyle assessment will help you and your audiologist to decide on the technology level you would be most satisfied with.
There are different shapes and sizes of hearing aids available, you decide about the right kind of hearing aids according to your hearing loss and requirement. There are few invisible options but those cant be very useful with high degree of hearing losses. There are behind the ear options that are visible but provide you with more control and gain.
PRICING:
Hearing aids are costly devices, a good digital hearing aid can start from somewhere ten thousand rupees and can costs up to 4 lacs for a single piece. The pricing of hearing aids are generally inclusive of the services of the audiologist that he will be providing you in future like regular hearing aids fine tuning, regular hearing assessment, battery supply etc. There are few centers that are providing hefty discounts on hearing aids, but they may not be providing the expected services or they may not have qualified staff or they may have paid services. Always enquire about the services and credential of the audiologist and service provider before opting for any device.
Hope, you may find some helpful tips from this article. Share if you like.
Thanks
Lovedeep Kholia, M.Sc Audiology