Hearing issues are one of the most common health issues adults visit an ENT for.
While hearing problems tend to begin in the late 40s & are most prominent in the elderly, younger people can experience it too.
A range of health issues can bring about hearing problems. These include certain infectious diseases, autoimmune disorders, injuries, accidents, surgeries, tumors, & side effects of some medications.
Certain disorders like Meniere’s Disease & Labyrinthitis can also cause hearing issues.
Tinnitus often presents with hearing issues, which causes the patients to lose their external hearing, sometimes completely.
Most patients have experienced significant improvement in their condition with the help of hearing aids.
Hearing Aids can help patients with varying degrees of hearing loss live productive, fulfilled lives.
However, many types of hearing aids exist in the market. Choosing the right one for your hearing loss is crucial to ensure they’re actually helpful for your condition.
In this article, we’ll tell you about the different types of hearing aids & tips on choosing the best hearing aids for your hearing issues.
Functioning of Hearing Aids:
Hearing Aids are digital devices that amplify external sounds in order to help the wearer hear those better.
They are usually powered by traditional batteries; some even come with rechargeable batteries.
Hearing Aids consist of the following parts:
Microphone: These capture external sounds from the surroundings around you & sends those to the amplifier.
Amplifier: As the name implies, it amplifies the sound received from the microphone & transcodes it into digital information bits. The amplifier is set to a certain frequency of sound, & only amplifies the sound upto the level of requirement. Since every individual has differing degrees of hearing loss, each hearing aid consists of amplifiers set to different frequencies according to specific requirements. The amplifier sends these digital signals to the speakers/receivers as a final leg of the hearing aid mechanism.
Receivers: These convert the digital signals sent by the amplifier into sound waves that can be heard by the patient. In some hearing aids, they are marked as ‘speakers’.
Types of Hearing Aids:
Hearing Aids differ by size, power, & usage. Different individuals require different kinds of hearing aids for their hearing issues.
Generally, your doctor will recommend the perfect hearing aid for your condition.
Still, it pays to know about the various types of hearing aids you can choose from.
Completely-In-The-Canal(CIC):
A Completely-In-The-Canal(CIC) hearing aid can easily fit inside your ear canal completely. This allows them to stay hidden from an external point of view. CIC hearing aids are useful for people that suffer from mild to moderate degree of hearing loss.
Since CIC hearing aid fits completely in the ear canal, it has several advantages. These include:
Least visibility from outside. Small size allows for easy portability.
Since it is inside the ear, it is less likely to pick up wind & other external noise.
However, it also has certain disadvantages. These include:
Come with extremely small batteries that don’t have a long life. Owing to their small size, CIC hearing aids can sometimes get difficult to handle.
CIC hearing aids often lack additional features like volume control & directional microphone.
Earwax buildup can easily clog the ears thus impacting the functioning of CIC hearing aids.
In-The-Canal(ITC) Hearing Aids:
An In-The-Ear canal is a custom made hearing aid, designed to fit only partially inside the ear canal. Like CIC hearing aids, ITC hearing aids also help people with mild to moderate hearing loss.
The advantage of ITC hearing aids is that it remains hidden from an external point of view. They also contain some enhanced features to support hearing loss that aren’t normally available in CIC hearing aids.
Its disadvantages include:
Handling issues due to its small size
Like CIC hearing aids, ITC hearing aids are also prone to earwax clogging blocking the ear canal.
In-The-Ear(ITE) Hearing Aids:
An In-The-Ear(ITE) hearing aid has two types. One type is designed to fit the outer ear that is a bowl-shape(also known as full shell). Another type is designed for fitting inside the lower part of the ear(also known as half shell).
Both are useful for people with hearing loss ranging from mild to severe.
ITE hearing aids also come with directional microphone support, which is useful for locating the exact source of the sound.
The advantages of ITE hearing aids include:
Extra features that aren’t included in other types of hearing aids, like volume control.
Are usually easier to handle than other completely-in-the-ear hearing aids.
Come with a larger battery with a longer lifespan.
ITE hearing aids also have some disadvantages. These include:
Easily visible from an external point of view
Functioning can get affected by excessive earwax
They might also pick up an increased amount of wind noise & other external disturbances.
Behind-The-Ear Hearing Aids:
A Behind-The-Ear hearing aid loops atop your ear & is located behind the ear. The hearing aid fits in your ear canal with a tube connecting it to the custom-made earpiece(also called the ear mold).
BTE hearing aids are the best hearing aids for people of all ages and support all kinds of hearing loss.
A Behind-The-Ear hearing aid has many advantages. These include:
Some new designs make it easy to hide BTE hearing aids. Normally, it is the largest hearing aid available in the market.
Consists of directional microphones
Has better sound enhancement & amplification capabilities
Its disadvantages include:
More wind noise and external interference
Might or might not come with rechargeable batteries
Receiver-In-The-Ear or Receiver-In-Canal hearing aids:
Receiver-In-The-Ear(RIE) or Receiver-In-Canal(RIC) hearing aids are quite similar to a behind-the-ear hearing aid. The speaker or receiver fits inside the ear canal in a similar manner.
However, in a RIE or RIC hearing aid, a tiny wire connects the ear piece to the speaker/receiver, unlike a tube in the case of BTE hearing aids.
RIE or RIC hearing aids are useful for treating mild to severe hearing loss in patients of all age groups.
A RIE or RIC hearing aid has many advantages. These include:
Its behind-the-ear portion is somewhat less visible than BTE hearing aids.
Consists of directional microphone
Also consists of manual control features
Generally comes with a rechargeable battery
Its disadvantages include its visibility from an external point of view & susceptibility to earwax clogging and blockage.
Open Fit hearing aids:
Open Fit hearing aids are a variation of behind-the-ear(BTE) & Receiver-In-The-Ear(RIE) or Receiver-In-Canal(RIC) hearing aids.
It basically consists of a BTE hearing aid modified with a thin connecting tube. In the case of RIE or RIC hearing aid, it consists of an open dome in the ear.
This design helps it to keep the ear canal open & free. It allows any low-frequency external sounds to enter the ear canal the natural way, & amplifies any other external sounds in an enhanced manner.
Thus, Open Fit hearing aids are a good choice for people who have adequate low-frequency hearing & only require other external sounds to be modified. They can easily help people with mild to moderate degree of hearing loss.
How to decide which is the best hearing aid for me?
These decisions are best left to an audiologist & ENT specialist. They can help you find the exact choice of hearing aid & even get it custom designed to better suit your needs.
Naturally, this requires an ample amount of data.
Your doctor will conduct elaborate hearing tests to find out the exact range of frequencies that you are able to hear.
Based on the results of the hearing tests, they will either recommend a readymade hearing aid to you or order a customized hearing aid that helps your hearing loss in the best possible way.
Getting the right hearing aid is important to live a healthy, meaningful life if you suffer from any degree of hearing loss. Putting off the decision to the future will only harm you & worsen your hearing progressively.
Consult with a hearing specialist & an ENT today.
Hearing loss creates a lot of problems in a person’s personal & professional life, & causes issues with their emotional well-being.
The causes of hearing loss can be diverse and not particularly related to any specific reason.
Certain diseases, illnesses, infections, medications, & accidents can lead to hearing loss, as can certain structural & genetic disorders.
Whatever the cause of hearing loss, hearing aids can help treat your hearing loss.
They can very easily help you hear properly & interact with other people more meaningfully.
However, it’s important to choose the right hearing aids for this purpose.
How do hearing aids work?
A hearing aid is basically a battery-powered electronic device that helps you hear external sounds more accurately.
They are quite tiny so they can easily be worn around or behind your ears, & they help make external sounds louder to help you easily hear those.
With the help of hearing aids, you can amplify external sounds which helps you communicate with the other people around you in a better way.
There are three components of a hearing aid. These are:
A microphone, that picks up external sounds
An amplifier that makes those sounds louder
A receiver that sends these amplified sounds into your ear.
However, hearing aids don’t benefit everyone who wears them. Hearing Aids often benefit those people who have damages to their inner ear and/or the nerve that links the ear with the brain.
The damage can be due to:
Disease
Aging
Loud noises
Medications
Hearing loss that occurs due to issues with the eardrum, ear canal, or middle ear, is called conductive hearing loss.
In most cases, surgery or any other medical intervention might help relieve the hearing loss of patients.
But these options are often not for everyone.
Typical Hearing Aids only work for you if you have an open ear canal & a relatively normal exterior ear canal.
Instead, a device that sends sounds to the inner ear through their skull bone, might be the best option for them.
How you can get a hearing aid?
An Ears-Nose-Throat(ENT) doctor can help you with the proper hearing aids for yourself.
These specialists can easily evaluate & help treat your hearing loss.
The ENT specialist will conduct exams to help you find out the best hearing aids for your case.
In addition to that, an audiologist will perform certain tests on you to figure out the exact type of hearing loss you’re suffering from.
You should always get hearing aids from a specialist, only after performing all the tests and due diligence.
Avoid mail-ordering hearing aids as they often don’t fit correctly, & don’t improve your hearing issues much.
Most people don’t experience hearing loss in both ears, however, some people do.
For people with hearing loss in both ears, it’s probably best to wear two hearing aids.
Types & Styles of hearing loss:
An audiologist can help you find the right kind of hearing aids for yourself. They will figure out the best kind of hearing aids for you depending on your exact degree of hearing loss, & also modify it according to any special needs you might have.
The factors that determine what kind of hearing aids is best for you:
The type of hearing loss you suffer from & its severity
Your age
Your experience & efficiency with small devices
Your lifestyle
The cost. Hearing aids costs can vary greatly in price, often ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars
Hearing Aids are primarily of two types. These include:
Analog hearing aids: These convert sound waves to electrical signals that help make the sounds louder. They’re generally less expensive than the other kind of hearing aids. They are also easier to handle as they have easier volume controls.
Digital hearing aids: These hearing aids convert sound waves into numerical codes much like computer codes, which then amplifies them.
The codes include information about the direction of a sound, its pitch, & its volume.
This helps the patient easily control & modulate the sound volume, frequency, & intensity according to their physical conditions & surroundings, i.e., whether they are in a quiet room, setting, or someplace noisy & loud. Most digital hearing aids are able to adjust such tiny details & nuances automatically, without any manual adjustments.
The automatic kind, however, costs significantly more than the manual digital hearing aids, but have shown better results & are also smaller in size, thus easier to handle. They are also more powerful than manual digital hearing aids.
Style of hearing aids:
There are three main styles of hearing aids. They differ in their size, placement in or over the ear, along with how much they help the patient hear external sounds.
These styles include:
Canal hearing aids: Canal hearing aids fit inside your ears which makes them harder to see. An In-the-canal(ITC) hearing aids are made to fit a specific canal of your ear. A completely-in-canal(CIC) hearing aid is smaller & nearly disappears inside the ear canal. Both types are used to treat moderate to severe hearing loss, however, since they are both extremely small, they can be difficult to adjust & remove.
Owing to this reason, these usually aren’t used for small children & older people who might have difficulty adjusting to them.
These devices are quite difficult to see, hence you might want to wear them every day, or even use them for several months at a stretch.
In-The-Ear(ITE) hearing aids: ITE hearing aids fit completely inside your ear. They come in a hard plastic case that holds the electronics parts.
They are used for people with mild to severe hearing loss, although they are not suitable for children whose ears are still growing in size.
Behind-The-Ear(BTE) hearing aids: BTE hearing aids sit encased in a hard plastic case behind your ears. A plastic ear molds fits inside the outer ear & directs sounds to the ear.
A different type, which is called Mini BTE, fits entirely behind your ear with a narrow tube that goes into your ear canal.
This tube helps prevent earwax from building up inside the ear, as well as helps make your own voice sound clearer.
BTEs can help treat mild to severe hearing loss, however, they aren’t for everyone.Receiver-In-Canal(RIC) & Receiver-In-the-ear(RIE) hearing aids: Both of these hearing aids have a behind-the-ear component that connects to the receiver in the ear or the ear canal with a tiny wire. This helps low-frequency sounds to enter the ear in a natural way & also helps the high-frequency sounds to be amplified through the hearing aid. RIC & RIE hearing aids help patients with mild to severe hearing loss.
You can also modify any of these devices according to your specific needs & requirements. Your doctor will help you define those needs & requirements, based on which they will specify the exact hearing aid for you. Book an Appointment: https://vertigoandearclinic.com/contact-us.php
It is performed by trained & licensed speech-language pathologists, often known as speech therapists.
Speech therapy technique is used to improve communication among patients.
Speech therapy includes articulation therapy, language intervention activities, & other stuff depending on the type of speech or language disorder.
Speech Therapy is necessary for speech disorders that occur in childhood, along with speech problems in adults often caused by a stroke, an illness, or a brain injury.
Who needs Speech Therapy?
Speech Therapy helps treat several speech & language disorders in patients. These include:
Articulation Disorders: Articulation Disorders refer to the inability to properly form certain word sounds. Children or adults with this disorder might not be able to pronounce certain words properly, or pronounce them with an added sound. For example, a child with articulation disorder might pronounce ‘this’ as ‘thith’.
Fluency Disorders: People with fluency disorders face problems with speaking fluently or clearly in a sentence. Stuttering & cluttering are some examples of a fluency disorder. A person with stuttering may repeat certain words or be unable to complete a sentence without a ‘stutter’, & a person with cluttering may speak too fast & mix words together.
Resonance Disorders: A resonance disorder happens when a blockage or obstruction of regular airflow in the nasal or oral cavities results in alteration of the vibrations responsible for delivering a proper quality of voice. This disorder can also occur if the velopharyngeal valve doesn’t close properly. Cleft palate, neurological disorders, and swollen tonsils can all cause Resonance Disorders.
Receptive Disorders: Someone with receptive disorder fails to understand & process what others are saying. This can cause people with this disorder to seem uninterested, slow, confused to others in a conversation, along with causing them problems in understanding directions & following orders through.
Disorders like autism, hearing loss, & a head injury can all cause receptive disorders.
Expressive Disorders: Expressive disorder refers to a difficulty in expressing or conveying information. People with expressive disorders may find it difficult to create properly structured sentences & use incorrect verb forms or tenses.
Developmental disorders like Down syndrome & hearing loss can cause Expressive Disorders, so can head injuries & any serious trauma.
Cognitive-Communication Disorders: Cognitive-communication disorders occur when an injury or damage to the part of the brain that controls speech & your ability to think causes problems with speech & understanding others.
It can cause memory loss, a decrease in problem-solving capabilities difficulty speaking, or listening to others. Biological problems like abnormal brain development, & some neurological symptoms like a brain injury or stroke can cause cognitive-communication disorders.
Aphasia: Aphasia is an acquired speech disorder that affects a person’s ability to speak clearly & understand others properly. Aphasia usually occurs following a stroke & other brain disorders.
Dysarthria: Dysarthria is a condition that results from problems with controlling the muscles used in speaking. It causes a person to slur their words & slow down their speech. Dysarthria often results from nervous system disorders that cause facial paralysis & throat & tongue weakness like Multiple Sclerosis(MS), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis(ALS), & stroke.
How Speech Therapy helps patients?
Speech Therapy works by retraining a patient’s brain or other systems of the body to speak & articulate properly, as well as redevelop cognitive skills to help them understand others & study situations better.
Speech therapy for children:
Speech therapy for children consists of exercises & activities depending on your child’s age, the exact speech disorder they have, & the level of their motor skills.
During speech therapy, the speech-language therapist might:
Interact with them through talking & playing, as well as using books & pictures of other objects to help train them language intervention & language stimulation skills.
Musing age-appropriate play to model certain sounds & syllables to help children get familiar with them & pronounce them better
Provide adequate instructions & easy-to-follow homework & guidelines for parents &/or caregivers of the child on how to perform speech therapy on the child at home
Speech therapy for adults:
Speech therapy for adults focuses on training them in speech functions, language skills, as well as cognitive-communication.
It also helps retrain them to help with their swallowing & eating difficulties along with speech & language difficulties, as happens in Parkinson’s disease & oral cancer.
Speech therapy exercises for adults may involve:
Problem solving, memory, & organization activities, along with other activities & exercises aimed at improving cognitive-communication skills
Conversational exercises to help improve language & speech skills
Breathing exercises for resonance & oral exercises to strengthen the jaw & other muscles used in speech
Along with this, patients can also make use of specialized apps to help them speak & pronounce words better, along with certain workbooks & video lessons from their speech therapist.
Which are the top 10 speech therapy centers in Jaipur?
The top 8 speech therapy centers in Jaipur that help patients, both children & adults improve their speech & get over their speech & language impairments are:
Dr. Anita Bhandari’s Vertigo & Ear Clinic: Provides excellent speech therapy services & specially trained speech therapists & language trainers to help patients get over their stutter & other speech difficulties caused by a range of neurological as well as genetic issues
Lavanya Speech & Hearing center: Another great speech therapy center in Jaipur, has speech therapy experts with over 10 years of experience in speech therapy & other language issues. Good track record of service.
Sai Speech & Hearing Center: They provide excellent diagnostic, speech therapy, expert audiologists, & hearing loss treatment services in Jaipur. Experienced professionals with good reputations.
Perfect Speech & Hearing Clinic: Provides excellent-quality speech therapy training for adults as well as children & helps them get over their swallowing, speaking, & eating difficulties.
Kuber Speech & Hearing Center: Helps people get over their speech impediments by providing professional grade speech-therapy services & language training to help them articulate better.
Eternal Hospital: Provides expert speech-training services for children & helps them improve their speech skills, language efficiency, & also solves their eating & swallowing difficulties.
CureWell Clinic: Provides excellent speech therapy for children with hearing impairment & speech difficulties, along with consultation for other hearing issues & neurological disorders.
Swastik Speech & hearing clinic: Helps kids with hearing issues & speech disabilities improve their speech skills & language efficiency with highly skilled & expert speech therapy sessions.
