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Hearing Loss & Hearing Aids
If you have noticed a reduction in your hearing, you’re not alone. It’s estimated that more than 40 million Americans over the age of 18 suffer from at least some hearing loss. To avoid permanent damage or hearing loss, it is important to seek treatment as soon as possible. When the brain's inner ear, hearing nerve, and auditory processing regions are not used, they slowly lose the ability to interpret certain frequencies of sounds. It is possible to stimulate the hearing system once again with hearing aids, but it is more difficult to recover your listening skills the longer you wait.
How Hearing Aids Work
A hearing aid is a small electronic device you wear in or behind your ear. It magnifies sound vibrations entering your ear so the surviving ear cells can detect and pass them along to the brain. Making some sounds louder allows you to listen, communicate, and actively participate in your daily activities.
If you have hearing loss in both ears, you will need two hearing aids. This could help you localize sounds better, distinguish one sound from another, understand speech in noisy environments, and shorten the time it takes to adjust to the hearing aids.
These devices are meant for people with reduced hearing due to aging, disease, certain medications, noise-related injury, or heredity. However, there are practical limits to the amount of amplification a hearing aid can provide, and people with severely damaged hearing may not benefit from one.
Hearing Aid Services
UConn Health provides a full range of hearing aid services, including:
- Hearing aid consultations & hearing aid fittings
- Hearing aid inspections, cleaning, reprogramming and repairs
- Custom-fitted earmolds and hearing protection
**Types of Hearing Aids We Offer
The right hearing aid for you depends on many factors, including the severity of hearing loss and your preferences. Many of the latest hearing aids are rechargeable, so you don’t have to replace batteries. They can also connect to your smartphone, so you can easily adjust them.
We offer a full range of hearing aids, including:
- Receiver-in-canal (RIC) hearing aid: A tiny device behind your ear connects to a thin receiver wire that goes into your ear canal.
- Canal hearing aid: An in-the-canal (ITC) hearing aid fits the size and shape of your ear canal and sits deep in the canal. A completely-in-canal (CIC) hearing aid fits is nearly impossible to see.
- In-the-ear (ITE) hearing aid: This device fits entirely inside your outer ear.
- Behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aid: A tiny plastic device behind your ear connects to a custom-fitted earmold or tubing in your ear.
The Hearing Aids We Recommend
At UConn Health, we work with various quality hearing aid manufacturers and closely monitor the latest research and performance studies for the style of hearing aid best suited for each individual's hearing loss.
We currently work with the following manufacturers:
- Phonak
- Oticon
- GN ReSound
- Starkey