"I see that hearing aids are available for purchase online. Is there a difference in the quality of the hearing aids?"
Yes! As we talked about earlier in the week, most hearing aids sold online and at big box stores have circuits designed for adequate amplification in quiet environments. However, if your primary complaint is the inability to understand what people are saying in noisy environments, these hearing aids may not be able to compensate for your particular type of hearing loss. If you find it difficult to understand speech in restaurants or crowded rooms, children's and women's voices, and/or telephone conversations, more advanced digital noise suppression and other features may be required to compensate for your particular type of hearing loss. Therefore, the first consideration before you purchase hearing aids online is "Will the model of hearing aids really compensate for my hearing loss? Do they have the correct features to help me hear better in noise?"
The second consideration when purchasing hearing aids online, is: "How will the instruments be programmed to account for my particular hearing loss?" Using an audiogram and the hearing aid manufacturer's guidelines for how the instrument should be programmed to compensate for the type of loss outlined in the audiogram may not be adequate to properly adjust the instrument's settings for how you listen.
Two people with the same hearing test results do not listen the same.
This means that people have varying degrees of speech comprehension, even when their hearing loss looks identical on an audiogram. Because of this, it is important to meet with an audiologist who can program the hearing aids to compensate for how you listen. An audiologist will adjust the hearing aid settings according to a variety of factors including how well you tolerate loud sounds, how clearly you follow speech in noise and in quiet, and how well you understand rapid speech.
For more information about how audiologists adjust hearing aids to compensate for an individual's level of speech understanding in the presence of noise, click here.
One more consideration must be made if you are thinking about purchasing hearing aids online...more next week!
Image provided courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
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