You may have heard a recommendation from your audiologist that you'll need to replace your child's hearing aid frequently as he or she grows. You realize, of course, that as your child grows larger the earmold will become too small for the ear and won't fit snugly any more, but why is it necessary to replace it quite so often? Here are three reasons you shouldn't go longer than the recommended time before getting another earmold fitting.
1. Comfort
You may not think about comfort as a factor of hearing, but if you have normal hearing yourself, it's hard to understand how dependent your child may be on his or her hearing aid. If the hearing aid becomes too small to fit correctly, it may not just rattle around inside the ear; it may actually chafe and cause discomfort or even pain. If this occurs, your child may have to choose between hearing and comfort. Make sure your child knows it's okay to tell you if the earmold becomes uncomfortable.
2. Function
It's not just the physical aspect of fit that will change when your child grows. An improper fit can also prevent the hearing aid from functioning correctly. For example, if the hearing aid is too small, sound may be able to more easily escape back to the outside of the ear. This can cause interference and make the hearing aid not function correctly.
3. Feedback
One of the problems that can happen when sound escapes around the earmold is a feedback loop. This occurs when sound produced by the hearing aid is picked up again by the microphone and amplified out the other end as a louder sound, which is then picked up again by the microphone and fed through the device repeatedly until it becomes an unidentifiable whine or squeal. If you want to know what a feedback loop sounds like, just cup the hearing aid in the palm of your hand while it's switched on. The squealing sound can be unbearably loud and could give someone a headache, so you can understand how if this occurs your child won't be able to use the hearing aid until the problem is resolved.
These three points show why frequent earmold replacement is necessary and describe what can happen if it's left too long. To prevent these problems, you should get your child a new earmold about as often as he or she gets a bigger shoe size.
Contact a service like Waters ENT Sinus & Allergy to learn more.
Share2 September 2015
My name is Katie Langer. For a long time, I was bed ridden and I felt like I had no control over my life. I simply went along with what was instructed by my doctor and I didn't ask questions. It wasn't that my doctor wasn't willing to work with me, but I preferred to simply not think about the illness I was suffering from. I didn't realize that some of the symptoms I was suffering from were side effects of my medication and were not normal. After communicating more with my doctor, I was able to alleviate my symptoms. Since then, I've taken an interest in patient-doctor relationships and how to improve them.