My ear canals are relatively straight and I’ve always had problems with my left ear mould slipping out of the canal. This is especially prominent when I wear my over head headphones for work calls. Suspect it’s the pressure combined with jaw movements.
Over the years I’ve done
CIC acrylic. Went deep into the ear and appeared shallow on the surface
RIC silicon small. Different ‘grippier’ material that started in similar spot from outside of my ear and didn’t go as deep
RIC silicon large. Very large canal focused mould that was more prominent from the outside but finished in similar spot in canal to my small silicon mould
Here’s some side-by-side pictures of the three recent moulds I’ve tried as I’ve gone from CIC to RIC. https://imgur.com/a/PC1RfkC
During my fitting I’ve tried mouth closed, keeping my mouth slightly open with a bite and also constantly talking, moving my head around, etc. Each have resulted in similar slippage.
I’m wondering if I need a canal lock or retention wire and curious for feedback from current users. How comfortable are they? How visible are they? Did you try any other solutions before settling on your final choice?
My preference is for the most discrete and secure solution so want to avoid full ear mould skeleton or otherwise.
Thanks, yes I’ve seen this one before.
I’m trying to work out if my larger mould is just a canal lock that’s just combined all together as opposed to a pronounced lock. Guess I’ll confirm in my follow up appointment in a few weeks.
Don’t put headphones over top of your hearing aids and expect that there won’t be feedback.
If you really want to, your clinician might be able to dramatically attenuate the high frequency gain. Or you can try BTEs with snug full shell silicone molds. But the feedback risk is very high in this situation generally. Can you just stream to the hearing aids directly?
I wear my over the ear headphones over my aids very comfortable without feedback by lowering the volume of my aids to -1. It is only a slight lowering of volume and with the equalizer adjustments in my headphone’s app the sound is wonderful. My aids are Oticon INTENT1, and ny the way before i received my INTENT1 aids I wasn’t able to enjoy music, I don’t even need the music program.
I started out with canal locks, then went to full skeleton, and now to the semi skeleton. The canal lock wasn’t enough, the skeleton is good but i find the semi skeleton is much moe comfortable and it works for me as well as a full skeleton without the pinching that the full skeleton caused when i wear my over the ear headphones. My ear molds are and have always been acrylic.
