One of the many products being pushed hard this holiday season is over-the-counter hearing aids. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently allowed sales of the devices after years of unregulated hearing products being on the market. There are, still, of course, prescription hearing aids, available from a licensed medical professional.
We sort it all out, with help from a local doctor.
One of the easy-to-find over-the-counter hearing aids being sold in Milwaukee is from the international firm Lexie.
In one of their internet ads, an announcer promises, "It's no longer necessary to break the bank to get your hands on a pair of quality hearing aids."
The ad goes on to mention that once you buy the hearing aid, you can download a computer app, that will help you adjust the hearing advice. Need human help? There's online support. Six days a week.
Milwaukee-area audiologist Bridget Elliott says she and other highly-trained hearing experts are not against the FDA-regulated over-the-counter devices. But she says not every customer is a technical whiz.
"You have to be technologically savvy enough to download the app, pair the instrument to your phone and set the instrument per the instructions of the device all on your own. You also have to be able to physically fit it. Most of them come with different sizes of ear tips," Elliott tells WUWM.
Elliot is a Doctor of Audiology at Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin. She advises having a check of your hearing first.
"Because, at that exam, the reputable, credentialed professional will physically examine your ear. They will test your hearing. If there is any sign of ear disease, in any way that would need medical follow up, that could be identified at that appointment," Elliott says.
At Elliott's office in Oak Creek, she says one part of an initial assessment involves a patient sitting in a small studio that has headphones and audio speakers, and listening to this test:
"Say the word chief. Say the word gaze. Say the word rot. Say the word haze," asks the recording from an audiometer.
Elliot explains she tries to determine if there's good clarity, meaning, if a patient can understand speech.
"So, these are single syllable words. No context. They sound like five other words, like for instance, the word, chair. Well, that could be bear, hair, stare, mare," Elliott says.
Elliott says a hearing aid for the patient who can't hear those words clearly, might be appropriate. Or maybe, she says, the person has a disease of the ear that may need other treatment.
In another room, Elliot plays audio from what's called a Real Ear Measurement System, designed for people who are wearing a hearing aid.
A recording plays what's known in the world of audiology as—the carrot passage:
"A carrot is a long reddish-yellow vegetable, which has several thin leaves on a long stem, and which belongs to the parsley family. Carrots are grown all over the world in gardens. And, in the wild, in the fields."
Elliot explains the test:
"I can measure, real-time, right in their ear, what that product is doing compared to their hearing loss, and compared to something we call the long-term average speech spectrum. Or, how loud we know the different parts of speech have to be in order for you to hear it, compared to your hearing loss. So, if you come in and say, 'You know, I'm not really hearing any better with this thing,' I can say, 'That's because all the higher-frequency consonants are not even audible to you. So, possibly, let's open up that app. Maybe we can walk you through how to help you change that," Elliott says.
Elliott offers one more reason to consider a prescription hearing aid. She says depending on your health insurance, it may offer enough coverage to bring down the price of the device, and perhaps even make it less expensive than what Lexie and the other over-the-counter manufacturers are offering.
But you're still probably going to pay well into the hundreds of dollars and maybe into the thousands if a hearing aid is what you need to hear better.
