Pressure in ear canal from hearing aids

Well honestly my Audi’s programing hasnt been great on any of the aids. Like I said, my personal Insitu programming has served better than the Audis programming. But even better than that, I was able to just import my gains from the Q50’s right into any of the phonak products. I had to manually go in and change the program settings according to my old aids yes, I defeatured them. I defeatured the P70’s, the M70’s, the P30’s but the P50’s performed comparable to my Q50’s. The P70’s we’re very noisy. The P30’s we’re too quiet. Like I said, when I imported into the P70’s the gains were really high. When I imported to the P30’s the gains were real low. When I imported to the P50’s everything was equal to the Q50’s. The P50’s perfom like my old Q50’s. Seems pretty simple to me :man_shrugging:t2:

Yes this is what most DIY people find out, that they can actually do a better fit, but this is only because we know what we hear and how we like to hear, no guesswork needed, which no audiologist/test equipment could possibly know.

I did go see a Dr. Cliff recommended Audi in Painesville, OH. After extensive testing she said the air-bone gap is so significant in low frequencies which would explain the dissatisfaction with digital aids. She seems to think I would be better suited with a BAHA implant or even a stapedectomy if I am eligible which would reduce the size of hearing aid needed, it would close the air-bone gap, require less power and the quality of aids would increase. So I’m gonna do research. I’ve never heard of a BAHA implant or knew what the stapes was before.

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Do yourself a favor and get a second opinion

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Hass5744 is correct. Get another opinion whether BAHA will help you.

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Yeah I’m not really interested in the BAHA, but if what I understand about the stapedectomy is true I’d be interested in that. I like being able to take my hearing aids out at night when I want to, I sleep great. It would be nice to be able to wear a smaller aid, they are much cheaper too. But I guess what it comes down to is if insurance will cover it, how invasive such a procedure is, and how long it would put me out of work, etc. I did make an appointment with an ENT to see what they say. My current audi wasn’t thrilled about the idea of surgery. I did see an ENT in 2018, Lippy Group in Warren, OH, and they wanted to do exploratory surgery. They said they could reconstruct my middle ear, but were unsure what exactly was going on with inner ear and couldn’t tell with an MRI so the exploratory surgery would need done.

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Stapedectomies can be very successful, but it depends on the state of the inner ear and until they open things up it can be difficult to know–they may have to back out without completing the stapedectomy if things aren’t as manageable as they had hoped. Surgeon will tell you pros and cons and risks.

It would be interesting to see your audiogram.

Yeah, no question I would look into my surgical options with that loss. Kind of shocking this is the first time you are being given the option. Left ear first probably.

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I came back to say that a successful surgery on that loss would be life-changing.

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That is, you could potentially hear better WITHOUT hearing aids than you are hearing WITH hearing aids right now. And then even better yet with hearing aids.

And a superpower BAHA is not out of the question and would also probably dramatically improve your sound quality.

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Would you say look into a stapedectomy?

Did your audiologist do an Rinne test?

Regarding Stapedectomy surgery, the complications after surgery is hearing loss,dizziness,cerebrospinal fluid leakage and tinnitus.

Absolutely. ASAP because I’m very curious to know the outcome. :smile:

Don’t need a Rinne.

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My left ear wasn’t used when l was growing up because l would feel vibration when sounds are coming in so l had exploratory surgery when l was 15 years old. The ENT doctor looked and found all the bones next to eardrum was not damaged.

So I had imaging done. I cannot have a stapedectomy. My inner ear, the snail looking things, they are incomplete, not fully developed. The ends are developed, but the middle part isn’t. So they are full of fluid and any surgical procedure would probably rupture the fluid. Then I’d end up without any nerve conduction. So they want to do a BAHA trial, but I’m not entirely sold on that idea. I wear a hard hat at work all day, every day. I’m gonna try it, but I’m doubtful I’ll go that route only because of how invasive they are. If I wasn’t in the trades I’d be more receptive. Maybe a new career.

Ahhh, interesting. Mondini and maybe enlarged vestibular aqueduct? Thanks for that update. I imagine you are trialing a BAHA on a softband first? The quality on a softband isn’t quite as good as with the implanted BAHA and is perhaps a bit more unpredictable for you specifically given your inner ear, but if you like the sound quality that may make it more appealling for you. If you don’t want the surgery then you could just keep the softband (or sound arc, or adhear), but the surgery isn’t really that much more invasive than getting a dental implanted. They aren’t worried about the BAHA surgery?

Im not worried about the implant. I’m more worried about the actual device, it’s a pretty large device on the exterior of the skull, I’m not sure I could even get my hard hat on with the amount of space it takes up was what I was referring to. Hearing aids don’t require as much real estate. And yes, I’ll trial a head band, I go in Monday to pick that up. They aren’t worried about the BAHA, he said if anything we’ll find out if there’s any issues upon the trial :man_shrugging:t2:

Oh, no, you’d probably have to take it off when you put the hard hat on. But it’s still removable even when implanted. You don’t sleep or shower with it, for example.

Probably the most critical time to be able to hear, though, is when wearing a hard hat at a site.

WH