- Hi guys.
Dr. Cliff Olson from Applied Hearing Solutions,
and in this video, I'm teaching you how to
clean and maintain a receiver-in-the-canal hearing aid.
Coming up.
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There are many different styles
of hearing aids on the market right now,
but all of them require some level of care and maintenance
and cleaning in order to keep them functioning properly,
and even though there's a bunch of different manufacturers
that make receiver-in-the-canal style hearing aids,
it's important to understand that they all generally
have the same processes that you would go through
in order to clean and maintain them.
So what I want to do in this video
is show you the simple things that you can do
from the comfort of your own home
in order to preserve the cleanliness and longevity
of your own hearing aids.
The first thing that we'll do is change out that wax trap.
You may or may not notice that it's plugged,
but for preventative reasons,
we'll want to make sure that we remove it
and replace it with a new one.
And that's what this tool is for.
So we'll take the one end, push it into the center,
and pop out the old wax trap,
and then we will flip it over and push in the new one.
And it should stay.
I always give it a tap with my finger
to make sure it's on there all the way.
The next thing that we'll want to do
is take a Kleenex and wipe off the entire hearing aid.
Once you have all the earwax and debris
off of the hearing aid,
we're okay to start with the brushing.
So we want to make sure that we brush
over the microphone ports, and there might be several
on the hearing aid, depending on
which model you're working on.
Get the rear microphone.
And then most of these devices have a push button.
We want to make sure that we
brush off around that push button.
If any debris gets into where that push button is,
it will prevent that button from working.
And same thing with the microphones.
If we have any debris over the microphones,
we want to make sure that we keep that out of there,
otherwise it won't actually pick up sound to amplify.
What we can also do is open up the battery door,
and brush out any debris that's inside
of the battery compartment.
If too much debris builds up in there,
the battery won't make contact
with the battery contacts,
and the hearing aid won't turn on.
Lastly what we want to do
is clean the dome, and when we're cleaning the dome,
we can take an alcohol swab
and make sure that we get all the earwax off of it.
If you don't have an alcohol swab,
you can also use a Kleenex for this.
And then I always like to take
either the wire tip of the cleaning tool
and push it through the tip
of the dome to make sure there's no wax in there,
and we could even take the wire end here
and stick it through to make sure all the earwax is out.
You can also just replace these domes altogether
if you need to.
And then we're gonna push it right back over the top.
Now another thing that you should be doing
as part of your regular maintenance plan
for your hearing aids, is using some form of a Dri-Aid kit.
Some kind of kit that can pull the moisture
away from your hearing devices.
I tend to like the ones that force air through
the hearing aids, which generally get them drier
than ones that you just put in a container
and has some silica beads in there,
but doesn't necessarily circulate any air.
That being said, if you're not using anything,
you should be using something,
and the price can range anywhere from about
ten dollars up to 150 depending on the caliber
of Dri-Aid kit that you get,
but even a ten dollar one is better,
absolutely better, than nothing at all.
That being said, another thing you should
absolutely be doing in order to maintain
the cleanliness and performance of your hearing aids
is getting them professionally cleaned
every three to six months.
If you're the type of individual
who produces a lot of earwax or you sweat a lot,
it's definitely something you should do
closer towards the three month area,
and if you're someone who generally
has clean ear canals, doesn't sweat a whole lot,
you might be okay extending that all the way out
to a six month period of time.
But hands down, if you want to maintain the clarity
of your hearing devices, and you want to get them
to last as long as humanly possible,
getting regular maintenance
done by a hearing care professional
is the absolute best way to do that.
That's it for this video.
If you have any questions, please feel free
to leave them in the comment section below.
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I'll see you next time.
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