Hearing Aid Accessories: The Basics with Dr. Egan
Hi, I’m Doctor Egan from Now Hear This, and today I’m going to talk to you about some different accessory devices that you can use with your different kinds of hearing aids.
So, a lot of folks ask about accessory devices in our clinic. Usually, it’s people who’ve gotten hearing aids elsewhere and have maybe moved to the area or have seen them through friends or family, things like that. What I always say first is let’s first just get your hearing aids programmed up to date, working their best because oftentimes, hearing aids that are appropriately programmed using real ear measurement are all that you need. They get you where you need to go in regards to hearing as close to possible to normal hearing, again, in regards to hearing the TV, hearing in restaurants, things like that. So, I always say let’s start there and keep things simple.
That being said, sometimes depending on the severity of your hearing loss and you know how bad it is, folks still need an accessory device. I like to think of it as there’s hearing loss and there’s hearing as close to normal hearing as possible, and we have to figure out how to bridge that connection. Usually, hearing aids are enough, but again, depending on the severity of the loss, there are other strategies, resources, accessories that can come into play.
And so, we’re going to talk about some of those accessory devices.
Now, all major hearing aid manufacturers have similar equivalents to what I’m about to show you. So, for example, here is an accessory; this is a remote control. It has a plus and a minus and a program change. This can be really handy for folks who are more sensitive in certain environments, need to turn the volume down, or in certain environments like board meetings or things need to turn the sound up. They’re also really great for folks who either don’t have a smartphone, don’t have a compatible smartphone with their particular style of hearing aid, or just prefer not to use their smartphone to make adjustments to their hearing aids. They’d rather have this clicker-type device in their pocket, and that’s perfectly fine. So, it will vary in exactly how it looks, but they’re all pretty small and they have these buttons. Think of it like your TV remote control, but for your hearing aids.
Speaking of TV, all the different major manufacturers also have a TV streamer accessory. Basically, how this works is it is plugged into the TV, and it comes with a bunch of different cords so that whatever TV type you have, it can be compatible. Once it’s installed, it will stream the TV’s audio signal directly to both of your hearing aids for much clearer sound quality. This works really well for a variety of people who struggle to hear the TV. A lot of my patients who really like it like to watch TV while their spouse doesn’t want to hear everything. So, think you know, they’re blasting the hockey game that night, and their spouse is walking through the room and doesn’t want to deal with it? Well, if they turn the volume down, they can’t hear the commentators as well. But if they stream via a Bluetooth TV streamer, that sound quality goes directly to both of their ears. Both spouses are happy. So, that’s another really good creative solution for people who struggle to hear the TV.
Another accessory that I really like is a partner microphone. Again, they vary in what they look like, but they’re all fairly small like this. They all have a little clip to clip to your top or come with a lanyard, and they have a wide variety of features. One is that they can be used to directly connect the Bluetooth of your hearing aids with a computer. Most hearing aids are compatible with smartphones, but not all of them are compatible with other devices like laptops, desktops, things like that. This device would make them compatible. So, a lot of folks who are still working or do a lot of Zoom calls really like using this feature. Another thing the partner microphone can do is in the name partner microphone. It can be used when clipped to someone else to directly take their voice to the microphone stream across the room directly to your ears. That is incredibly effective in a really noisy restaurant or at a distance. I once had a patient say, “I was working on the plumbing underneath the sink and I couldn’t hear my wife read to me the instructions, but when she had this clipped to her, everything was fine.” So, not facing people, background noise, things like that. They also usually come with volume controls, so you can think of it in a sense as having a little bit of a remote built-in too, which is a nice feature.
Lastly, another accessory which unfortunately I don’t have an example of with me today would be something called a table microphone. They tend to look like a little disc or puck. What they do when set on the table is they have an array of different microphones so they can detect the different voices in the group setting at a table and zoom in on each of them as the conversation changes. So, if you are someone who really struggles in group settings, that accessory is a little bit pricier, but is highly effective. And if you think about it, the partner microphone is great, but it only works with one partner. So, the table mic is the next step up from that, where it can pick up many different voices more effectively in a group setting.
I hope you learned a little bit about the different kinds of accessories we sometimes need to use to bridge that gap between hearing loss and optimized hearing. If you have any questions or you’d like to learn more, just give our clinic a call. And I hope you enjoyed learning this.
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