Hearing Aids for post treatment

[Lily]

Can anyone shed some light on the issue of:  Does a hearing aid help with a hearing loss from the AN, when speech recognition is very poor.  This is prior to surgery of course.  I have been told by a hearing technician that a hearing aid would help, as it would increase the volume to understand the words.  The high end hearing aids also mute out the background noises as well.   Thanks for any advise you can give on this subject.....Lily

[sgerrard]

Based on my experience, word recognition is not helped much by hearing aids. I score about 85% on word recognition, despite having quite a drop in hearing level on the AN side. So for me, a hearing aid boosts the volume, and my hearing can recognize the words. But even with that score, I notice some words are garbled. I imagine that if I had a lower word recognition score, I would just be hearing loud garbled words instead of soft ones.

Do you now how poor your word recognition is? The number they usually give is that you need at least 50% to get useful hearing. The hearing aids do reduce background noise distraction, but if the words are garbled sounding, an aid won't clear them up.

The hearing aid should come with a 30 or 60 trial, allowing you to give it back for a full refund if it doesn't work (I think it is law in the US, anyway). If it does, it might be worth trying it, but I would not get your hopes up too high if your word recognition is really that poor. Sorry not to be more encouraging.

Steve