Fitting and aftercare
Buying the hearing aid is day one. What decides whether it gets worn or ends up in the bedside drawer is what happens over the following weeks.
- Programming
- Measured inside your ear
- Check-ups
- By appointment, in the clinic
- Make
- Any, bought anywhere
Your ear has been hearing less for years, and has got used to it
Hearing loss settles in slowly. By the time someone decides to do something about it, several years have usually passed, and in that time the brain has quietly shelved the sounds that stopped arriving.
That is why we do not set the aid on day one to the level the audiogram calls for. It would sound tinny, the fridge would sound like a lorry and you would take it out within the hour. We start below target and come up over the following visits, guided by what you tell us.
What you will notice from day one are sounds you had stopped hearing: the car indicator, the bird on the terrace, your own footsteps. It grates. It is meant to at first, and it passes.
Why we programme with a probe inside your ear
The manufacturer’s software works out a curve from your audiogram and an average ear. Yours is not the average ear: every canal has its own length and shape, and that changes what actually arrives at the eardrum.
Real-ear measurement puts a very fine probe next to the eardrum with the aid in place and shows on screen what is getting through. We correct from there. It is the difference between programming what the computer assumes and programming what your ear receives.
We check again in free field, through loudspeakers rather than headphones, to see what you have gained in something close to a real room.
The mould is made here
The piece that goes in the ear is made in our workshop from an impression of your canal. Having the workshop in the shop has a practical consequence: if it presses, works loose when you chew or whistles, it is corrected here rather than waiting on an outside laboratory.
A mould that rubs or whistles is the commonest reason a hearing aid stops being worn. Come back with it. That is not a nuisance complaint, it is part of the job.
What happens at each check-up
Check-ups are not a sales formality. A hearing aid is a microphone and a receiver living somewhere warm and damp, and it degrades gradually without your noticing.
- Otoscopy, to see whether wax is blocking the sound outlet
- Cleaning the device and changing filters, tubing and domes
- A run through the analyser, comparing today’s output with the factory figures
- Reprogramming around whatever is currently letting you down
- A control audiogram, because hearing carries on changing over the years
If your aids are another make or came from elsewhere
Bring them anyway. We check, clean and measure hearing aids bought at another centre, in another region or in another country, whatever the make. It is a service like any other and you do not need to explain yourself.
The only limit is set by the manufacturer: where the fitting software is not shared, we can clean them, run them through the analyser and change consumables, but not readjust them. We tell you that before touching anything, not afterwards.
Salt, sweat, sand and sun cream
There are eight months of heat here and the sea is five minutes away. A hearing aid in Puerto de Mazarrón works in worse conditions than the same aid in Manchester, and the repair rate shows it.
- Put your sun cream on before the hearing aids go in, not after
- Never swim in them: for water there are custom plugs, which are a separate piece
- Coming back from the beach, blow the tubing or mould through and store them open and dry
- If you sweat heavily, ask us about a drying unit: it costs little and it buys the device years
- Sand scratches the microphone, so keep them in the case rather than a swimming trunk pocket
Common questions
How long will it take me to get used to them?
It varies a great deal from person to person and we are not going to give you a figure. It depends mostly on how many years you spent hearing less. What we do know is that the people who come back for their check-ups get there, and the ones who stop coming give up.
My hearing aid whistles. Is it broken?
Almost never. That whistle is usually sound escaping past the edge of the mould and going back into the microphone, or wax acting as a mirror. It is fixed by adjusting the mould or clearing the ear. Book as soon as it starts.
I bought them in the UK or in Germany. Will you look at them?
Yes. Bring them with whatever paperwork you have. We clean them, change consumables and run them through the analyser. If the manufacturer does not give access to its software, we will say so: we can maintain them, but not reprogramme them.
How often do I need to come in?
Several times over a short period at the start, while the programming is being settled. After that we suggest at least once a year, with a control audiogram. And any time something feels wrong, without waiting for the appointment.
Can my daughter come in with me for the fitting?
If you like, yes. It helps a lot to have the person you talk to most in the room at the first fitting: we can adjust while you listen to their actual voice, which is the one you want to understand.
The information on this site is for general guidance and does not replace a professional consultation. If you have symptoms, please see your optometrist, hearing aid audiologist or doctor.
