digital aids

[Guest guest]

I was talking to ryan's audiologist today about upgrading 's hearing aid.

He's had the same Phonak Sono Forte hearing aids since he was 3 months old. At

that time we didn't know how much they benefited him. He was diagnosed as

severe/profound. He was implanted at 20 months. He uses the aid in his

unimplanted ear. In recent testing it turns out he's more moderate-profound and

does receive some benefit from the aid in his unimplanted ear even though I

can't tell the difference when he doesn't wear it and he doesn't care either.

He can actually understand some speech without any device on if I'm speaking

right in his ear.

I've discussed it with another audi over the year too and she said that the

Phonak that he has now is a good hearing aid and I might just want to wait until

it totally breaks down before we want to invest in a newer model. 's are

currently five years old. I mentioned to the other audi in the office today

that I had been considering upgrading the the newer digital technology hoping to

give him the best sound. I thought maybe the feature of noise reduction might

be helpful for him. She gave me an interesting perspective that I hadn't heard

before and I don't even know if it's a common or proven thought. She said that

when the kids get their aids early and are used to the background noise their

auditory processing system learns to tune it out like we do. She had the

thought that we don't want to take it away. She said they did some

experimenting with some of the older kids and put the noise reduction feature on

one of hearing aid programs and they never used it. They actually preferred it

without the noise reduction feature. I recall some people saying that the

digitals sounded softer and their kids had to get used to that. Anybody have

thoughts on this theory. I know to me it just seems like wouldn't be able

to get much of any speech in his hearing aid when it's a noisy environment, but

then again he's relying mostly on his CI anyway. It's been confusing

considering he relies on his CI.

K

's mom, 5.5 years, MEDEL CI and hearing aid