Hearing Aids:
APPROPRIATE VOLUME AND PROTECTING YOUR HEARING Hearing aids are designed to help their wearers hear better. In fact, they help people understand better. That said, you can rest assured that hearing aids will never be loud enough to damage the residual hearing of their wearers.
An assessment by an audioprosthetist is required to determine which hearing aid suits the patient’s needs.
In fact, hearing aids won’t cause discomfort by amplifying overly loud sounds. Of course, they do occasionally need to produce loud sounds, but if Audioprosthetists program the MPO into the they made their wearers uncomfortable (by produhearing aids, because it can vary depending on the cing sudden sounds, for example), nobody would model and the extent of the wearer’s hearing loss. want to wear them! Overly loud sounds could also The audioprosthetist will ensure that encourage wearers to manually turn “Hearing aids won’t the MPO offers the patient the best down the volume on their hearing compromise between comfort and aids. However, doing this makes the cause discomfort effectiveness. After all, MPO settings hearing aids less able to process by amplifying overly can affect the sound quality of the other, necessary sounds. amplification and the ability to hear loud sounds.” As a solution to this issue, modern clear, intelligible speech sounds. hearing aids use non-linear amplificaThey also allow the hearing aids to reproduce tion, which increases the volume of quiet sounds the varying volumes of the noises around us. and decreases the volume of loud sounds. When If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get the surrounding sounds reach a certain threshin touch with your audioprosthetist! old and the amplified volume reaches potentially uncomfortable levels, a limiting or clipping system kicks in to define the maximum output level, Charles-Edouard Basile or MPO (Maximum Power Output). Business Development Manager
Reference - Harvey Dillon, Hearing Aids, Second Edition, Thieme, New York, 2012.
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