First experience with hearing aids

Hearing Aids
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#1

Hi,

I would like to ask the community for some feedback on my first experience with hearing aids.

I’ve had tinnitus for over a decade and have recently found out I have hearing loss in the higher frequencies. I’ve attached the audiogram:

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I was told by the audiologist that I needed hearing aids and have since trialled the Signia Silk C&G 5IX for ~3 weeks and I’m now 1 week into trialling the Widex SmartRIC 440. Both with a tulip mold type.

My reason for posting here is that I’m having a hard time proving to myself that I really need the hearing aids because I don’t notice much of a difference, if any difference at all. I’m even slightly inclined to say that it makes speech recognition worse. I’ve had a play with different programs and volume settings but again I don’t notice much difference. And regarding my tinnitus, I’m not even sure if it helps reducing it but I can definitely tell that it doesn’t make it go away, unfortunately.

Wondering if anyone has had a similar experience. Any thoughts?

Thank you.

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#2

Yeah so looking at your audogram shows a normal to moderate in those higher frequencies, gives a bit of clarity to the speech, but your not noticing it much, bird song, microwave Beebs etc, I guess it’s the speech in noisy environments you’d get some help with HAs, have a look at the speech banana.

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#3

My tinnitus isn’t really changed by my hearing aids, unfortunately, though the ENT had suggested it might. The tinnitus is ever present but pretty uniform and I’m mostly used to it.

The advice I got was to get hearing aids when the hearing loss started to bother me, which I did. If you weren’t really having trouble hearing, it’s not surprising you won’t notice much improvement.

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#4

You are very borderline for hearing aids. If you aren’t experiencing functional deficits and the hearing aids don’t help with the tinnitus, take them back.

Assuming well-fit hearing aids, a bit of extra emphasis on the highs might help with the tinnitus and might offer a very mild hearing improvement. But is your tinnitus even bothering you, or are you already pretty good at living with it?

Try popping off the tulip dome and just sticking them into your ears without–do you get benefit then without the muffling? I would expect to hit targets pretty easily on a hearing loss like yours with a fully open fit, but maybe your ear is a bit atypical.

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#5

I agree with Neville. You are borderline. I have fit patients with your loss that loved the aids. I have also fit patients with you loss that either saw no difference or even hated the aids. If you are not receiving enough benefit now, take them back and try again when the hearing gets worse.

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#6

I rarely notice my tinnitus while wearing my aids. I get whacked when I take them out at night. I use a sound generator to help me sleep.

WH

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#7

Exactly the same for me, only when I remove the aids do I notice my tinnitus, but I think I’m lucky as i don’t always “hear” the same sounds, something different every now and then.

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#8

Same here when I wore aids and now with cochlear implants.
Tinnitus is bad enough I want to wear the hearing devices.

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#9

Your hearing loss is similar to mine.
I bought hearing aids to help with a specific need which was hearing speech properly in business meetings. If 2 conversations were happening at the same time in a meeting I was unable to comprehend either, so the hearing aids fixed that problem.
Otherwise I would not have bought them.

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#10

Youll probably have good speech recognition as your hearing in speech frequencies is good. However, youre losing out on higher frequency sounds. So, if they’re important to you, youre losing out. But they might not be.

I dont find HAs do anything for my tinnitus other than flooding it by amplifying sounds I want to hear which subdue the perception of the tinnitus frequency somewhat. I believe that tinnitus is a brain rather than ear phenomenon for most people- it just doesnt get helped much by the HAs themselves, EXCEPT using notching in Signias, and noise generators to mask it.

In your case, so-called OTC HAs may be most useful rn, incl. the Apple Airpod Pro 2 if you already have a recent iPhone,

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#11

Only about 50% of people with tinnitus get rid of it by using hearing aids. Dr Cliff from the YouTube channel is one of the unlucky ones.

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#12

Thank you everyone for your replies.

I’m going to make the most out of the trial before deciding whether to keep or return the HA.

Sometimes when I get the HA out I start to miss them even If I’m in a quiet environment. Putting them back in provides some relief but it’s so subtle it’s hard to explain.

This weekend I’ll be in a noisy environment (restaurant) so I’ll have a better idea whether this HA are better than the Silk I trialled before. I found the Silk to be rubbish with conversations in a noisy environment.

I’m used to living with tinnitus as I’ve lived with it for more than a decade, but some days it’s terrible getting out of bed in the morning and it’s all I can hear. I wonder if the hearing loss shown in the audiogram is simply the result of my tinnitus masking the beeps fom the test at those levels and frequencies and if the tinnitus was to magically disappear the audiogram would go back to normal. Does this make any sense?

One thing I don’t like about this Widex SmartRIC 440 is that the bluetooth cuts out extremely often even with my phone right next to me. And the sound quality of the music is only comparable to very cheap headphones. This is disappointing given how expensive these devices are.

#13

I think the theory is a bit upside down from that. The tinnitus sound comes from the brain making sense out of the missing signals from the nerve somewhat like phantom pain from missing limbs. If you could magically restore your hearing the tinnitus might go away. I think to some extent they have no idea. But many with tinnitus also have hearing loss.

WH

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#14

You a coffee drinker?

#15

I’ve had long periods with and without coffee. Doesn’t seem to make a difference.

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#16

@Rich123, I think you are disappointed due to unproper fitting. Have you ever had REM? Maybe you have upward spread of masking:

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#17

Looks similar to mine I think. I was often asking people to repeat themselves because although I could hear the word I struggled to make it out from similar words.

I decided to get hearing aids and I feel better for it and people notice I’m not asking them to repeat as often.

Do prepare for a bit of trial and error though. Although it’s my higher frequencies, just upping these was a bit uncomfortable. Running water, food packets etc suddenly sound quite opinionated :rofl:

I have found that toning these down a bit and boosting the mids and dropping the lower end a touch helps me with understanding and separation. The fitting formula used can make a difference too.

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#18

The slight hearing loss (seemingly insignificant) in the tonal audiogram may not reflect actual hearing difficulties, especially in noise.

The WRS in quiet and SIN test may provide more information.

It is individual —with two patients with the same tonal audiogram, one may have great difficulties, and another one may not.

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#19

No REM. The audiologist didn’t mention it. What I had done was what I think are called feedback and sensitivity tests with the HA in. I don’t think the audiologist made any manual adjustments in the software apart from specifying the mold type (tulip) and adding various programs so they are available via the app. The software done all the configuration automatically based on the results of those tests. Should I ask for REM and would that make a difference in my case? Thanks for sharing the video.

#20

I did a SIN test. I can’t remember the exact results but I think my score was pretty good. I don’t know what a WRS is.