Comparing Points When Considering Hearing Aids

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Firstly, let’s take a look at what a hearing aid is. Hearing aids are devices that are used in order to improve hearing. They are mostly used by those who have partial deafness. They are available in different sizes some being available in very compact forms which even fit into frames of your eyeglasses. Hearing aids are by and large very helpful as they improve the quality of sound, increasing the volume though they cannot restore a person’s hearing, and are only meant to make relatively inaudible sounds more audible.

How Do Hearing aids work?

Believe it or not, in the United States, you will find that there are over one thousand different hearing aids’ models with each one having a microphone that receives sound, increases it’s volume using an amplifier and finally transmits the sound to a speaker or receiver which sends the sounds to the user’s ears. Most hearing aids use battery power to work. In addition, you can find different kinds of hearing aids including digital, in-the-canal, in-the-ear, behind-the-ear as well as those that are placed on the body, and they can even be found in mono or binaural with the former being used for one ear while the latter sends the sound to both ears, being the first choice of more than half of those that use such aids.

There are basically two different types of Hearing Loss;

1. Conductive in which the outer ear, or in some cases, the middle ear produces dull sounds which can affect how a person hears other sounds. This form of hearing loss makes it difficult for a person to hear sounds such as vowels that are known to have lower frequencies. Such a form of hearing loss may be caused by the presence of wax that obstructs the ear canal, infection in middle ear, or even a punctured eardrum, such a hearing loss may require getting surgery performed, or other medical treatment.

2. Secondly there is the other common hearing loss problem known as nerve deafness which comes about due to damage to hair cells or even to nerve fibers inside the inner ear, this results in distorted sound and there is also a reduction in volume of audible sound, which makes it hard for the affected person to comprehend what is being said; more so, when there is a lot of noise about, sufferers of such hearing loss are usually unable to distinguish different consonant sounds, or sounds with high frequencies.

As you can see, before opting to buy a hearing aid, you should get your condition diagnosed and undergo a medical examination after which an audiologist can decide whether such an aid will prove useful and more importantly, the type of hearing aid that will do the maximum good for your hearing loss problem. If you don’t take this precaution, you could end up spending a considerable sum of money to purchase hearing aids that may turn out to be unsuitable in the end, unfortunately often such expenses are not covered by your health insurance policy either.