Hearing Health Blog

Five Things To Know Before Buying Hearing Aids

November 16, 2024

Hearing Loss

What you are purchasing is more than a hearing aid

Your investment is not just in the technology you put in your ear. If it were that simple, you could easily buy hearing aids over the internet successfully. And we know that for most folks, that is not the case. You are making an investment in the provider you are choosing. Their abilities, experience, and their access to technology and choices of manufacturers is important to consider. Also, if your provider doesn’t have a sound booth to test your hearing before prescribing hearing aids and then after, to measure aided performance, walk away. How can they ask you to spend $5000 to $6000 on a set of hearing aids when they can’t even invest in a sound booth? Used sound booths typically cost under $10,000. If your provider is cutting corners on important technology that is considered necessary for the best practices in hearing aid care, you deserve better than that.

What are you paying for?

Most hearing aid purchases come with some kind of agreement for a certain amount of service to be included with the hearing aid purchase. Does the purchase include “a lifetime of service”? If so, you are probably paying too much. What happens if better technology comes out in two years? Do they offer “trade in” discounts to make up for all that free service you aren’t using?

Do they run real ear measurements?

Real ear measurement is the only way to ensure that your hearing aids are set prescriptively, for your hearing loss. This requires a separate piece of equipment from the computer your provider uses to program your hearing aids. It involves placing a probe microphone in the canal and measuring the sound coming out of the hearing aid. For almost every second opinion I provide, the patient learns that the reason they are unhappy with their hearing aids is because they are not set correctly. No doubt that provider looked at their computer screen and reported that the hearing aid settings were at the prescribed targets in the software. Well guess what? That tells a half-truth regarding how the hearing aids are performing. Everyone’s ear canal and eardrum are different, and these characteristics play a huge role in how the hearing aids perform. Unfortunately, the computer doesn’t know anything about these individual characteristics-only real ear measurement can uncover how these factors affect hearing aid sound quality and performance.

Investment Matters

Don’t be eager to race to the bottom for the “best price” just so you can brag about what you spent or to feel good about getting a “good deal”. If you have poor speech understanding scores, you need to invest in higher level technology. If you have a moderate to moderately severe loss, you need top tier technology. If you want to hear well EVERYWHERE, you need better technology. (And who doesn’t want to hear well everywhere?) The higher-level technologies available today make it easier to hear in noise. And if your speech understanding score is under 85%, you should not only consider top level technology, but also a remote microphone to place in the middle of a table at a noisy restaurant would be helpful. These technologies work. But they require more investment.

While all hearing aids are not created equal, they are more alike than they are different

Certain manufacturers do a better job treating severe and profound hearing losses. Some hearing aids have a much more natural sound and are best for treating those with tinnitus and/or mild hearing impairments. If you think one manufacturer can successfully treat every hearing loss, right now, you would be mistaken. It would be easy for any provider to only fit one manufacturer only; however, it’s not what is best for every patient.