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Portland Office
4311 NE Tillamook
503-774-3668
Office Hours
Mon - Thu
9:00 am - 7:00 pm
Call Now for your Free Consultation 503-774-3668
Portland Office
4311 NE Tillamook
503-774-3668
Office Hours
Mon - Thu
9:00 am - 7:00 pm
To reserve your time call for appointment
1-800-531-2139
Hearing Resources, LLC
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Hearing Resources, LLC
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Matching Your Lifestyle to a Technology Level
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The first point
I want to make is that choosing a technology level is not dependent on
the style of hearing aid a person may want or need. Hearing aid
style, wither a completely-in-canal (CIC), mini-canal (MIC),
in-the-ear (ITE), behind-the-ear (BTE), or one of the open-fit hearing
aids like the receiver-in-canal (RIC) or a receiver-in-the-aid (RITA)
also referred to as a slim-tube aid are available in almost any level
of technology. The biggest factors to choosing a style of
hearing aid revolve around personal preference, shape or configuration
of the hearing loss and what your listening needs are.
Lifestyle helps us to figure out the last of the above mentioned three
main factors for style of aid plus it helps to ascertain which
technology level, along with a couple of other technology fitting
factors that may need to be taken into account when picking a
technology level.
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The following guidelines
I will be talking about are some I have developed over many years of
fitting hearing aids to individual people. I use these to help
choose the right
technology level
for an individual's listening needs. I don't want to
over sell a client with technology they will not need or use over the
lifetime of the hearing aid but I also don't want to under sell the
client and not have available for them the technology that will let me
fit them correctly or short them on features that will prove
beneficial to them over the lifetime of the hearing aid. Since
technology level and price are very closely related choosing the
correct level is very important as can be seen.
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When matching
technology to an individual there are many things that go into the
decision. Some of these include the degree of hearing loss (how
much gain is going to be need), the shape of the loss (does the
hearing loss drop slowly over the speech range or are there areas
where it drops quickly and/or are there areas of hearing that are
within the normal range or drop across more than two hearing levels),
whether there are tolerance levels problems (as sounds grow louder do
they become uncomfortable, painful or cause a distortion of the
sound). The most important factor to choosing a technology level
though is the person's lifestyle and the listening needs that
lifestyle imposes on a person.
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To figure out a person's lifestyle, in a constant
manor, the best tool I have is the lifestyle survey ( a copy of this
survey is attached as a pdf file [click
here]). This survey gives a general idea of the events that
happen in a person's everyday life and how that person feels the
degree to which it affect their ability to understand speech or how
much of a problem they feel it is. The scale ranges from
"Not at all" to "Always". The answers are evaluated and a number
given to each answer. Depending on what a person's needs are the
survey will narrow the choice of technology level down to a more
manageable choice.
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While this does provide some guidelines it needs
to be understood that some listening needs, work or job requirements,
audiometric findings, and finances may dictate something other than
what is scored on the survey. I present this as one of the tools
I have developed and use. I hope you find it helpful.
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Our Facilities
Phonak Hearing Aids...(more) |
Unitron Hearing Aids....(more)
WOW!
Extended Wear Hearing Aid....(more)
Our
Intrepid Viking, how things have changed. |
The Wireless Technology Center or WiTC is the next step into the
future of Hearing Health Care...(more) |
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