It can be incredibly frustrating if you are wearing hearings aids but feel like you still cannot hear. If this describes you, we have three recommendations. The first is to get a second opinion. The second is to consider accessories or FM systems. The final thing to consider is that your hearing loss may be severe enough that a device such as a cochlear implant may be more beneficial. To learn more, contact Elk Grove Hearing Care.
TRANSCRIPTION
Hi. I’m Dr. Amy White, audiologist at Elk Grove Hearing Care. Today I’m here to talk to you about what to do when hearing aids are not helping. You may have a friend or a loved one, or you may be experiencing it yourself, someone who has worn hearing aids or is wearing hearings aids but feels like they really still aren’t hearing well and aren’t able to communicate well with their friends and loved ones. This can be incredibly frustrating, especially with the expenses associated with purchasing hearing devices.
When hearing aids are not enough, there are three things to do.
The first is to consider a second opinion. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had patients walk through our doors here who have said their hearing aids just don’t work for them. Come to find out, the devices they purchased were maybe not appropriate for them or maybe they purchased them online and they were never really programed well or they don’t fit in their ear or stay in their ear properly so the sound is not getting delivered to their ear well. Many many factors can go into programming a hearing aid so sometimes it could be that the device is incorrected or it could be that the programming is not correct or the person’s hearing loss has changed and they just haven’t gone in to have their hearing aid programming updated in a long time. Or even something as simple as wax plugging up the device with the microphones causing it not to function properly. So number one, if you’re not doing well with your hearing aids and your current provider doesn’t seem to be able to solve any of the problems, consider going to get a second opinion from someone else.
The second thing is to consider accessories or FM systems. Hearing aids alone oftentimes don’t do well in background noise if you have a lot of hearing loss. So we may need to rely on other things such as remote microphones, which are like clip-on microphones that you might place on someone’s shirt or lay on the table in front of them, to help pick up their voice better over the background noise. These type of accessories can go a really long way to improve our ability to communicate when we have a lot of hearing loss we are dealing with.
The third thing to consider is that some people have so much hearing loss, hearing aids really cannot help them anymore. And in those causes, devices such as cochlear implants may be warranted. A cochlear implant requires a surgery and is done with a surgeon. A consultation for those devices and testing for those devices are all done by an audiologist, as well as the programming. If you’ve been in hearing aids and you’re really struggling and feel like there is nothing else to do, you may very well find that you have so much hearing loss that hearing aids just aren’t helpful anymore. We may recommend considering a device such as a cochlear implant, which truly can change your life if that’s that case.
If you have questions or feel like you’re not performing well with your hearing aids, please come and see me. I promise we’ll figure something out. We love to see you here at Elk Grove Hearing Care.