Hearing Aid Styles

Video Transcript

"In front of me, I've got the full range of available sizes of hearing aids. The smallest that's currently available is called the completely in the canal hearing aid. The beige part that's visible there would fit inside the ear canal and it would be flush with the opening or the surface here would be flush with the opening of the ear canal. It's virtually invisible and sits very deep in the ear canal. That's the smallest that's currently available. The next kind size up is what we call an in the canal hearing aid. It's a little bit larger, it also sits very deep in the ear canal, but as you can see, the surface is a little bit bigger. This is the part that would be visible in the opening of the ear canal. The next size up is called an in the ear hearing aid. This is larger still and fills more of the ear canal. This surface here would be what would be visible in the ear. Each of these are custom hearing aids. They have to be custom made. Everyones ear canal is a different size and shape and so when we are fitting these hearing aids, we take a cast of the ear and that needs to be sent to the manufacturer so that hearing aid can be custom fit. The next two hearing aids that I'll talk about are the behind the ear hearing aids. There are two categories of behind the ear hearing aids. There's the behind the ear hearing aid, the traditional behind the ear hearing aid with a custom made ear mold. Again, this would be just the same situation as these, this portion would need to be custom fit. The last hearing aid that I'll show you is the open, behind the ear hearing aid. This hearing aid is much smaller and a custom ear mold is not required. This hearing aid is what we sometimes refer to as an instant fit hearing aid because the customization isn't required. "