- Hi I'm Cliff Olson, Doctor of Audiology
and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions,
and on this channel I cover a bunch of hearing-related stuff
to help make you a better informed consumer.
So if you're into that,
consider hitting the subscribe button.
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So the other day I had a new patient call my office
and wanted to come in for a reprogramming
of her hearing aids.
She hadn't been in to see her audiologist
in over a year.
In fact her audiologist had left town
probably about a year and a half earlier.
And her hearing aids just weren't giving her
the amount of sound that she was used to.
And so the first thing that came to her mind
is that they probably just need a little bit
of an adjustment, maybe her hearing's gotten worse
or something like that.
So I went ahead and scheduled her for an appointment,
and she came in that same day.
There are certain steps that have to be followed.
So that first step was doing the listening inspection.
The next step is doing a hearing aid cleaning.
There could be something wrong with the hearing aid
in the sense of it being dirty that could be causing
bad sound quality, distortion of sound,
softening of sound, things like that.
So I took the hearing aids through a full cleaning
and did another listening check.
And I still noticed that the sound quality was bad
coming out of the hearing aids.
So at this point I knew
that there was something going on with the hearing aids,
but I needed to know exactly what.
And the way that hearing care professionals do this
is that they use a test box.
What a text box does is it plays a sound
for the hearing aid and it measures the output.
This can tell you a bunch of things from
how much amplification the hearing aid is giving off
to is it distorted or not
to how much noise the hearing aid's giving off,
and you can use that
and very closely estimate if the hearing aid
is functioning properly or not.
So what I wanna show you now is the test box measure
for the patient's hearing aid
and a test box measure for a hearing aid
that I know is functioning properly
that is programmed to the patient's hearing loss,
and then show you the differences.
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I just wanna take a minute to show the results
of the hearing aid test box measures.
We have the patient's hearing aid on the right-hand side
and the well-functioning clinic hearing aid
on the left-hand side.
The first main difference that you see
is the shape of these curves,
and what you want to be seeing is a nice smooth
response by the hearing aid,
showing good sound quality.
On the patient's hearing aid on the right-hand side,
we do not have that same type of smooth curve.
The other thing that we look at is the amount
of amplification coming out of the device.
That number is an average number right here,
and on the well-functioning hearing aid we have a two,
and on the poorly-functioning we have a negative 18.
Essentially meaning when you put this hearing aid
in someone's ear, you're causing a hearing loss.
As we move down we see equivalent input and noise.
We want that number to be as low as possible.
The patient's hearing aid is 53,
and the well-functioning hearing aid is 35.
The last thing that we look at is the amount of distortion
coming from the hearing aid.
The well-functioning hearing aid has zero distortion
as expected, but the patient's hearing aid
has anywhere up to 52% distortion,
which is basically destroying the sound quality.
Based on these results we know that this patient's
hearing aid needs to be sent in for repair.
There is nothing that we can do programming wise
to make any of that any better.
So as you can see this patient's hearing aids
were actually not in need of reprogramming.
They were in need of complete repair.
The quality of sound that they were giving off,
no matter what I did in the programming software,
it wouldn't have made the hearing aids sound any better.
Maybe I could've made them sound louder,
but louder with distorted sound is a horrible thing.
So the hearing aids ultimately
needed to be sent in for repair.
Now one thing to keep in mind is that repairs like this
where the hearing aid essentially needs to be
completely refurbished are not cheap repairs.
If you're outside of warranty,
it can cost you a lot of money.
This is why I highly recommend that you
maintain a warranty on your devices
as long as you're able.
So what caused this problem?
Well the first issue is is that this patient
wasn't going in to see her hearing care professional
as often as she needed to be.
A lot of people think that well I only need
to go see my hearing care professional
when there's a problem.
And while you do need to go in and see them
when there's a problem,
you can prevent problems from arising by just
going in regularly.
And any time that you go in for these regular visits,
your hearing care professional will do
preventative maintenance that is much more detailed
and intricate and in-depth than what you can do at home.
The other problem is is that she really wasn't doing
any home maintenance at all.
When I asked her how often do you clean your devices,
how often do you change the wax traps,
things like that, she says,
well I never do that stuff.
No one showed me how.
That's a huge problem.
At least once a week you should be doing
preventative maintenance on your own,
which means brushing off the microphone covers
with your hearing aid brush,
changing out the wax traps if it needs it,
picking out any earwax that's lodged on the device anywhere,
and essentially wiping the moisture off of those devices.
Doing a little bit of preventative maintenance at home
will have a huge impact on the sound quality
and life expectancy of your hearing aids.
Now the third problem is,
she wasn't doing any moisture management on her devices.
And even if you live in a dry climate,
doing moisture management is critical
because moisture leaches from your body
into your hearing aids.
And whether you like it or not,
you living in a dry climate isn't enough
to pull that moisture out.
And so what I recommend is you use a dry and store kit.
Now you have two general types of dry and store kits.
You have a smaller one,
which is essentially a container, an airtight container,
that has some silicon beads in it
that will remove moisture from a device.
But perhaps the best way
is to use a dry and store kit like this,
which is called The Zephyr.
The difference between this one and this one
is that this one forces air through the hearing aids,
and this one just picks up any moisture
that falls off of the hearing aid.
There are also dry bricks that are put inside of here,
so any of that air that's forced through the hearing aid,
if it has moisture in it,
the dry bricks will pick it up.
So at nighttime when you take your hearing aids out,
you put 'em in this container,
you hit the start button.
It runs for about 30 minutes on a cycle
where it's forcing air through,
and then the hearing aids sit in there overnight,
making sure all every last bit of moisture
is pulled out of the hearing aid.
If you don't have one of these,
I highly recommend getting them.
You can get them on Amazon.
You can get them most likely from your
hearing care professional.
If they don't have 'em in stock,
they can order them for you.
They'll range anywhere from around $80 to $120,
depending on the model that you get.
You have to remember that hearing aids
are medical devices.
They're medical devices that live on and in your body.
Taking care of these devices
is extremely important if you want them
to stay functioning like they were
the day that you got them.
If you're not going in to see your hearing care professional
at least twice a year,
you need to start making that a priority.
Not only that,
if you don't have one of these dry and store kits,
you absolutely have to get your hands on one.
So the next time you think your hearing aids
just need an adjustment, think again.
They might actually need a repair.
That's it for today's video.
If you have any questions or comments,
leave them in the comments section below.
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I'll see you next time.
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