Hearing Loss

Hearing loss is a very common ailment that is encountered in people worldwide. An increase in your hearing loss is the most prominent side effect of ageing, along with this some people may also lose their hearing due to accidents or as a result of some other medical condition while others suffering from it may have hereditary defects. The reasons for your problems may be varied but there are solutions provided at all levels for all kinds of hearing problems today. In this post I’m going to take a look at some of the highly popular assistive hearing devices that are making the rounds of the markets today.

Treatment for hearing loss

First in line come the cochlear implants, which as their name suggests are used to help in bettering your hearing when the inner hair is damaged beyond recovery. A prolonged exposure to loud sounds leads to a permanent hearing problems to these hair that are employed to convert the sound vibrations into electrical signals that can be transferred to and processed by the brain . For this to function, a sound processor would have to be carried around with you. This generally consists of a small device that is mounted around chest height to register the sounds initially and digitally codes it so that it can be processed by the implant adequately. In some cases a medical condition or an accident may lead to damage to the ear canal area or the three bones in the middle ear. As a result of this damage the sound is not properly transmitted to the inner ear and hence the hair has difficulty in reading sound and converting them to impulses to be transmitted.

Hearing Aids for Hearing Loss

If a sound at increased volume, such as those provided by a hearing aid, is passed to the ear it would only create muffled voices due to some parts of the sound waves getting lost before it passes on to the inner ear.  This can be taken care of by using a bone conduction implant, more popularly known as Bone anchored hearing aids (BAHA). This falls back on the old theory that sound can be conducted thorough solids with lesser loss as opposed to when it travels through air. What happens over here is that this device is directly mounted behind your ear in contact with the skull. When a sound hits it some vibrations are produced. These vibrations are then sent directly through your skull to the inner ear, and it thus bypasses the outer and the inner ear. Thus there is no loss in the sound transmitted as the sound does not need to go through the damaged area. It should be noted that these devices are advised for specific conditions and cannot be used interchangeably. Just like a hearing aid can only be of limited use if the hearing loss occurs because the inner hair is damaged, implanting a cochlear device wouldn’t help if the canal is damaged. Ask a doctor to analyse your condition and then use the device that is the best for your usage.