Can Profoundly Deaf People Hear with the Help of Hearing Aids?

Hearing loss is a broad spectrum. Many of us will encounter it at some point in our lives, and today it affects almost 50 million of us all over the USA. There’s a chance that you could have a degree of hearing loss right now and not even know it. Hearing loss, after all, tends to take a while to sneak up on us. We can go years or even decades before realizing that our hearing has become a problem. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the faster you can get in front of an audiologist, the more they can do to mitigate the effects of hearing loss with a series of hearing tests and the recommendation, fitting and calibration of the right hearing aid. Hearing aids are designed to fill in the gaps in your hearing, amplifying frequencies that you have trouble hearing unassisted. Yet, while this is invaluable and potentially life-changing for people with mild and moderate hearing loss, what about those whose hearing loss is profound? Can profoundly deaf people hear with the help of hearing aids? In some cases, yes, they can.

How hearing aids can help profoundly deaf people

Hearing aids are unable to cure hearing loss. What they can do, however, is amplify sounds to make them more detectable to the ear and counteract the hearing loss, which is caused by damage to the nerves or the failure of the tiny hairs that govern our hearing. As such, powerful hearing aids can amplify sound to the extent where even the profoundly deaf will be able to hear something.

How profoundly deaf people might use hearing aids differently

Hearing aids will be used slightly differently for the profoundly deaf than they might for those with less serious hearing loss. In most circumstances, an audiologist will calibrate the hearing aid to compensate for the exact frequencies the wearer is “missing.” For a profoundly deaf wearer, however, it may be more appropriate to turn most or all frequencies up. Likewise, most of today’s hearing aids have features designed to help people to better detect speech in crowded rooms or block out distracting background noise. These features might typically be turned off for a wearer with more profound hearing loss. Finally, while many wearers might be tempted by a discreet hearing aid that sits in the ear canal, these will usually not be powerful enough for those with profound hearing loss. Only a behind-the-ear (BTE) model is typically powerful enough to be effective for these wearers.

Expectation management

The results a hearing aid can offer depend very much on the individual, so it’s important that those with profound hearing loss keep their expectations as realistic as possible. Whether you have mild or profound hearing loss, it’s important to remember there is an adjustment period to getting used to the devices. This means your brain has to learn to hear the sounds it has been missing again, which can take some time. Even in instances where a hearing aid is unable to allow the wearer to understand speech, they can still be useful. For example, they can alert the wearer to the sound of a nearby car or bus. They can identify when roadworks and other hazards are nearby but out of visible range. Even if they don’t perfectly aid verbal conversation, they can help profoundly deaf people to navigate their environment with greater safety and awareness.

The importance of a good audiologist

While a hearing aid can certainly be useful for wearers with profound hearing loss, this does not mean that they should buy one online or off the shelf of a big box store. A good audiologist can help in several ways to ensure you get the most out of your instrument. They can help ensure that the device is powerful enough to meet your needs and calibrate it so that it amplifies the sounds you need without causing further damage to your hearing. Furthermore, they can ensure a proper, comfortable fit and avoid the risk of itchiness or irritation. They can also help to ensure that your ear canals are in good general health and able to maximize sound conduction to the extent that they’re capable. Your audiologist will also educate you on how to properly care for your devices, and which features will be most beneficial to your needs. If you want to know more about how an audiologist can help you, don’t hesitate to call EarTech Audiology at (866) 464-1008.