Fitting Your Hearing Aid
After the hearing aid or hearing equipment has been ordered and sent to the hearing aid dispenser, it is prepared to be fitted to the patient.
In this process, the hearing aid is inserted into the patient’s ear, and the acoustic performance of the aid is valued. This will be achieved by using Real Ear hardware or by sound fieldaided test results. With the genuine Ear gear, a genuine Ear aided reply can be got, and the insertion gain of the aid can be measured.
This gain can be compared to the target gain generated by a selected prescriptive technique selected by the dispenser ( for example, NAL ), and the hearing-aid settings can be changed till a fair match is noted. In addition to the gain, similar adjustments are made to the total output of the aid to make sure that the aid does not surpass the patient’s loudness pain levels. After Real Ear measurements are taken, the patient might be placed in a sound booth where aided sound-field testing of the speech reception threshold and the speech discrimination in quiet and in noise can be made. The difference between the aided and the unaided measures ( ie, functional gain ) provides a general sign of the benefit supplied by the hearing aid. Questions the patient might have concerning wearing and using the aid are answered. If the patient seems to know how to insert and take away the hearing aid and understands a way to turn the aid on and off and adjust the volume control, she is permitted to leave with the aid.
In most settings, the hearing equipment is dispensed with a 30-day testing period, and the dispenser sets up 2-3 appointments with the patient in this time. During these follow-up visits, the patient’s ear mold might need to be changed for a more comfy fit or to reduce feedback issues.
Close to the end of the testing period, the dispenser may retest the patient in the sound field to get aided sound-field measures. The dispenser also may get aided measures of the patient’s self-assessed hearing handicap to consider the patient’s subjective perception of the advantages of the hearing aid.
If the patient comes to a decision to purchase the hearing aid, then the guaranty for the aid begins. Most hearing aids come with at least an one year guaranty. Extended guaranties are also available.
These sorts of guaranties are most acceptable for kids or other people who may be in danger of damaging the hearing aid.