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You may have noticed our recurring theme, “where you go is more important than what you get.” In support of this, we will be posting some case studies reviewing different situations where the services we provide made a big difference for someone who was otherwise not using hearing aids they received somewhere else.

In this case, the patient had good quality hearing aids they were fit with somewhere else but never received the proper benefit from them. After repeated visits to her original provider, she came to us hoping that we would be able to help her hear better with those same hearing aids. Below outlines the problems she came to us with and how we were able to help get her hearing well consistently with those same devices. The names used in the story are fake, for everyone’s privacy of course!

Jane came to our office with two hearing aids that were about 3-4 years old. They were Phonak receiver in the canal hearing aids (behind the ear with a thin wire to the ear canal) of which we have fit in our office before. She had been back to her original provider many times throughout the 3-4 years but never heard well. She complained of the following:

1. Not receiving the hearing benefit she believed she should have been, aka not hearing well!
2. Uncomfortable to wear, receiver and thin wire consistently comes out of ear.
3. Hardly using them due to the above mentioned issues.

Jane was interested in making these hearing aids work better for her if possible to avoid the expense of purchasing new devices. During her appointment we did a complete hearing evaluation and real ear measurement of the hearing aids before making any changes. We identified the following issues and made adjustments to improve her outcomes with those hearing aids.

1. Programming in the hearing aids was not properly set à adjustments were manually made to the programming.
2. Types of receivers on the hearing aids were not appropriate à replaced with the correct receivers.
3. The way the hearing aid and receiver fit on her ear was not correct as well as the incorrect types of domes were used à adjusted the receiver to properly fit her ear and installed different domes for a proper fit in her ear and to help improve sound retention and reduce feedback.
4. Real ear measurement was completed and compared to the results before any changes were made. After adjustments were made, the hearing aids were measured to provide a significantly better match to her hearing loss.

The work done in our office resulted in two very important outcomes for Jane. First, the hearing aids are correctly matching her hearing loss and it is a sound which is acceptable to her. Second, because they are a benefit to her, they are acceptable to wear, AND they consistently stay in her ear all day – she wears them all day every day resulting in improved hearing which was the original desire in the first place years prior.

In this case study we see that it was not the choice of the hearing instrument which was the problem, it was the professional fitting (or lack of) which caused the hearing aids to perform poorly for Jane.