Specialising In Invisible Hearing Aids

You’ve known you’ve had a hearing loss or had a feeling of sound in my ears for quite some time now and you finally get up the nerve to get your hearing tested. They tell you that you need a hearing aid and you cant help but think, Why did this have to happen to me?? Then they start telling you about hearing aids and use tons of terminology that just goes right over your head. Don’t they know that you are in shock?? How can you make an informed decision about anything when you don’t even know what they are talking about!? There are hundreds of different hearing aids. It can be a very complicated world of technological terms. Sometimes those of us that work with hearing aids all the time can forget just how foreign they can sound to you. To make matters worse, the manufacturers like to call things different names, so they sound like something different. No wonder there’s so much confusion!

I am going to try to unravel some of the mystery for you. When you get down to it, there are really only a few terms you need to understand. These features are the ones that really matter, and the model or the style of the hearing aid.There are seven primary styles of hearing aids: ITE, Half Shell, ITC, Mini Canal, CIC, iic, BTE, and Open Ear.

In the Ear (ITE) : ITE hearing aids are the largest custom style of hearing aid, filling the bowl of your ear, and can have the most power and features available for in the ear hearing aids.

Half Shell (HS) : The Half Shell is a custom hearing aid that only fills about half the bowl of your ear. They are able to have a good deal of power and features, use a smaller battery, but are more cosmetically appealing.

In the Canal (ITC) : The next smallest size is the custom ITC hearing aid. Harder to see than the larger hearing aids, but also not able to have as much
power or as many features.

Mini Canal (MC) : Smaller than the ITC hearing aid, the custom mini canal uses a smaller battery and has even less power available. Features can also be more limited. For instance, a mini canal aid won’t have directional microphones. The MC style is mostly housed in the ear canal, with some of the body of the aid extending to the tragus – the fleshy part of the outer ear just in front of the ear canal.

Completely In The Canal (CIC): Smaller than the Mini Canal hearing aid, the tiny CIC uses the same size 10 battery as the MC, the difference being that the entire hearing aid is housed within the ear canal, with the faceplate of the hearing aid sitting at the entrance of the ear canal. A CIC hearing aid will be invisible from the front, and partially visible from the side. If a person is standing just behind you and to the side, they will be able to see something in your ear.

Invisible In The Canal (iic): Starkey were the first to introduce an invisible in the canal hearing aid, the Starkey Otolens, now replaced by the Starkey Soundlens. The Soundlens ideally sits at the second bend, deep within the ear canal and in this position it is truly invisible. The audiologist will need to have been trained in deep impression techniques, and will need specialist tools to do this safely, but many feel that Starkey remain the best at producing really tiny hearing aids. Phonak responded to the Soundlens by introducing the Phonak nano, which doesn’t sit quite so deep as the Soundlens, though they have compensated for this by making the nano very short, so that the faceplate is recessed from the entrance to the ear canal. Siemens have two invisible hearing aids, the Siemens imini and the Siemens eclipse – both do the same job in slightly different ways, and are excellent choices. Widex have the Widex iic, a hearing aid in which the body and faceplate are all in one piece, and ReSound have the ReSound Verso iic. Nowadays, there is so much choice in invisible iic hearing aids, there’s bound to be something for everyone.

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