Healthy living
Body matters
NHS digital hearing aids: a personal experience
Kenneth Smith, a 67-year-old widower from Barnsley, Yorkshire, first noticed his hearing loss as a banksman, checking the cages going up and down the coal mine where he worked. That loss would force him into early retirement a couple of years later
"I'd be with a crowd and everybody would be laughing together," recalls Kenneth. "To me the conversation sounded like mumbo jumbo and I'd sit there looking miserable."
Kenneth had an analogue hearing aid fitted in each ear. These improved his hearing capability but were far from perfect. "I can't talk on the telephone and I miss words all the time on the telly or the wireless," he says.
Kenneth joined the RNID's campaign and lobbied his MP to get digital aids available on the NHS. In May 2004, he became one of the first beneficiaries of a new grant designed to do just that.
First appointmentKenneth's first appointment with audiologist Lee Gascoyne at Barnsley District General Hospital began with an ear examination and hearing test. Lee used a computer to match the new hearing aid's sound amplification perfectly to the level of Kenneth's hearing loss.
To do so, a tiny microphone is placed in each ear, alongside the hearing aids. This allows Lee to compare the level of sounds Kenneth can now hear against a computer graph derived from the results of his hearing tests to ensure that the aids are compensating precisely where needed.
Getting used to the difference
Analogue hearing aids use a microphone to pick up sounds, with a transistor amplifying the signals and feeding them into the earphone. The wearer uses a wheel-shaped volume control on the aid to moderate the level of noise. In a digital aid, a tiny computer tailors the level of sound precisely to the degree of hearing loss in each ear so that no volume control is required.
The digital aids available on the NHS are mostly those which sit behind the ear rather than inside it, with a soft tube channeling the sound into the ear through a custom-fitted ear-mould. So if anything goes wrong with the aid, the audiologist can swap it immediately, reprogramming the new one using the hospital computer.
Lee believes NHS audiologists today have unrivalled training in the new technology. "I worry sometimes about the quality of private audiologists who knock on doors selling to vulnerable older people, testing their hearing in their homes in non-soundproofed rooms," he says. "The difference is we only have patients' interests at heart."
One aid or two?Many people prefer wearing one aid, it being less obvious, even though their hearing might not be improved as much as with two. Previously NHS audiologists were under budgetary pressure to provide only one of the older, cheaper analogue aids.
"Now we have got the budget to offer people an aid in each ear - and it's definitely worth taking advantage if you have any degree of hearing loss in either ear," Lee says. Kenneth opted for two without hesitation.
With several settings, including a surround-sound setting useful when in traffic, say, or one-to-one setting for conversation, the user can control how the digital aid helps them hear.
Two months after getting his digital aidKenneth returned for a half-hour check-up. "I'm very pleased with it," he says. "It's such an improvement. I can hear the birds whistling and twittering and the tick of the clock."
Lee says it's important that clients don't forget they still have a hearing problem and that even a digital aid can't bring back 100 per cent clarity. "Some people keep coming back because they get to thinking that any hearing problem is the fault of the digital aid," he says. "But you'll be happier in the long run if you're realistic about what the aid can offer."
Information on this site is for interest only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. You should consult your own doctor about any specific health concerns.