Type of Hearing Aids

What is Hearing Aid or Amplification device?

A hearing aid or amplification device is a small and non-invasive electronic device that you wear in or behind your ears. It amplifies sounds so that a person with hearing loss can listen, communicate, and participate effectively in daily routine activities. A hearing aid or amplification device can help people hear more in both quiet and noisy situations.

Parts of Hearing Aid

A hearing aid has three basic parts: a microphone, amplifier, and receiver (speaker). The hearing aid receives sound through a microphone, which converts the sound waves to electrical signals and sends them to an amplifier. The amplifier increases the power/strength of the signals and then sends them to the ear through a receiver (speaker).

Why Hearing aids are important?

Hearing aid helps in improving hearing and speech comprehension of the person suffering from hearing loss / impairment caused due to damage of the small sensory hair cells (outer hair cell and inner hair cells) in the inner ear and the loss due to this damage is known as “Sensorineural Hearing Loss”.
Hearing aid amplifies the sound vibration entering in the ear with the help of Amplifier circuit to the extent needed as per the loss of the person suffering from hearing loss. Surviving hair cells converts these amplified vibrations into the neural signal that are passed to the brain with the help of Auditory Nerve.

Greater the damage to the sensory hair cells; greater will be the amount of hearing loss. If the inner ear is too damaged, even amplified vibrations will not be converted into neural signals. In this situation, a hearing aid would be ineffective and need of other listening devices along with the hearing aid are indicated.

Based on technology hearing aids are

Analog

These are basic type of hearing aids whose main job is to amplify the sound received from the environment. These hearing aids have poor Signal to Noise Ratio as compared to the Digital hearing aids because these hearing aids amplify unwanted background noise along with the speech signals. Thus, making the sound less clear and also this type of hearing aid makes buzzing sensation in the ear as the output of the hearing aid can’t be controlled. Now days, analog hearing aid with programmable microchips are also available which are little more advanced as compared to the traditional analog hearing aids.

Digital

These hearing aids coverts sound received from the environment into digital signals, filter, amplify and deliver sound signals to the hearing impaired person ears. These hearing aids have microchips which help this hearing aid to perform its task and the process is called as Digital Signal Processing. These hearing aids are available with range of features as per the price of the hearing aid. These hearing aids have built in intelligence that allows them to choose the needed sound to be amplified and filtering out the unwanted noise. Hence improving the signal to noise ratio and allows user to enjoy the clearer sound signals. These hearing aids are now enabled with Artificial Intelligence, connection to android, I-phone, Televisions and other assistive listening devices which opened the new doors of enjoying distortion and unwanted signal free sound signals.

Based on where hearing aids are worn, hearing aids are

• Body level Hearing Aids
• Behind the Ear (BTE)
• Receiver in the Canal (RIC)
• In the Ear (ITE)
• In the Canal (ITC)
• Completely in the Canal (CIC)
• Invisible in the Canal (IIC)