Hearing Aids: What are your options and how do they work?
Many people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing have some hearing. The amount of hearing a deaf or hard-of-hearing person has is called “residual hearing”. Technology does not “cure” hearing loss, but may help a child with hearing loss to make the most of their residual hearing. For those parents who choose to have their child use technology, there are many options, including:
Hearing aids
Cochlear or brainstem implants
Bone-anchored hearing aids
Other assistive devices
Hearing Aids
Hearing aids make sounds louder. They can be worn by people of any age, including infants. Babies with hearing loss may understand sounds better using hearing aids. This may give them the chance to learn speech skills at a young age.
There are many styles of hearing aids. They can help many types of hearing losses. A young child is usually fitted with behind-the-ear style hearing aids because they are better suited to growing ears.
Cochlear and Auditory Brainstem Implants
A cochlear implant may help many children with severe to profound hearing loss — even very young children. It gives that child a way to hear when a hearing aid is not enough. Unlike a hearing aid, cochlear implants do not make sounds louder. A cochlear implant sends sound signals directly to the hearing nerve.
Persons with severe to profound hearing loss due to an absent or very small hearing nerve or severely abnormal inner ear (cochlea), may not benefit from a hearing aid or cochlear implant. Instead an auditory brainstem implant may provide some hearing. An auditory brainstem implant directly stimulates the hearing pathways in the brainstem, bypassing the inner ear and hearing nerve.
Both cochlear and brainstem implants have two main parts — the parts that are placed inside the inner ear, the cochlea, or base of the brain, the brainstem ear during surgery, and the parts that are worn outside the ear after surgery. The parts outside the ear send sounds to the parts inside the ear.
Bone-Anchored Hearing Aids
This type of hearing aid can be considered when a child has either a conductive, mixed or unilateralhearing loss and is specifically suitable for children who cannot otherwise wear ‘in the ear’ or ‘behind the ear’ hearing aids.
Other Assistive Devices
Besides hearing aids, there are other devices that help people with hearing loss. Following are some examples of other assistive devices:
FM System
An FM system is a kind of device that helps people with hearing loss hear in background noise. FM stands for frequency modulation. It is the same type of signal used for radios. FM systems send sound from a microphone used by someone speaking to a person wearing the receiver. This system is sometimes used with hearing aids. An extra piece is attached to the hearing aid that works with the FM system.
Captioning
Many television programs, videos, and DVDs are captioned. Television sets made after 1993 are made to show the captioning. You don’t have to buy anything special. Captions show the conversation spoken in soundtrack of a program on the bottom of the television screen.
Other devices
There are many other devices available for children with hearing loss. Some of these include:
Text messaging
Telephone amplifiers
Flashing and vibrating alarms
Audio loop systems
Infrared listening devices
Portable sound amplifiers
TTY (Text Telephone or teletypewriter)