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Hearing aid expectations for single ear hearing loss

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Sorry if I missed this.
How long has she had this hearing loss?
Is this her first time with a hearing aid?

I can also see an with that loss.

In the hearing test, they would have done a word recognition test for each ear, and a result would be a percent correct, something like “left 55%” (or whatever).

You can ask your professional to do an “aided word recognition test” on the bad ear, with the hearing aid in. Then compare with the original hearing test. You should see better word recognition in the aided ear.

In reply to @Veroda

Hi, I don’t know how old the kids are, but even very young ones can be taught that mum needs their help and will often take a pride in being helpful. Teach them to come to her, get her attention by touch if necessary and make sure that she is looking at them before speaking. Make sure that they understand that she won’t hear them well if they are in a different room (even my husband still struggles with that!). Even if she doesn’t need all that it will reduce listener fatigue if she doesn’t always have to try so hard.

Thank you @Neville , that information is so helpful! We’ll definitely try an open dome.
And I think the audiologist is very understanding so thats a big plus
@Raudrive she’s had this hearing loss since the beginning of December and we’ve been slowly trying hearing aids but none seem to be doing anything noticeable for her so we were wondering what we should be expecting
@Don yes she did a speech recognition test with the last audiologist and she scored 66% at 65db if that makes sense (the good ear was at 50db where she got 100%)
We’ll definitely ask for an aided word recognition test next time thank you!
Thanks @Tealover the kids are still small but they’re getting the hang of it. I think its more hard for her psychologically to not be able to hear the kids…

We’ll push through for longer with the widex to see if it can help. She’s hoping to be able to hear the quieter sounds with the aid as she can make things out without the aid once they’re above 60 odd db. Not sure if thats realistic or not. Will read up on the Roger On too!

As an update, we took the advice given here and it has really helped. She is now using an open dome and the fit/comfort is much better!
Still getting to grips with it all and we’ll raise these questions with the audiologist but thought we’d ask advice here as its been so helpful for us.

  1. Does going from a small to a extra small sized open dome change the sound? Would it make things less clear? It sounds less loud - not sure it this was because of the occlusion in the closed dome that it sounded louder.
  2. The audiologist thought she might just get away with an open dome based on the feedback check he did. It’s feedbacking when she rubs her hair or hug someone. Is there a way to reduce the feedback without having to change the dome?

Again, thanks for all the help. Id get a couple of rounds in if I could!

I’m a bit late to this discussion and only have my own experience to offer so I’m not sure how useful this is, but I thought I’d share it anyway. I am new to the world of hearing aids despite having had bilateral high frequency hearing loss for probably almost 10 years. My is not that dissimilar to your wife’s bad ear, but in my case it’s the same in both ears and because it happened relatively slowly it wasn’t a shock to the system like your wife’s clearly was for her.

I finally got hearing aids in December (Philips 9040 with open domes) and although the first few hours were extremely intense as my audiologist put me at 100% from the start (Why is everybody shouting? Why does my breathing sound like Darth Vader? Why does my coat rustling sound like someone using a circular saw?) I found the improvement in understanding speech was immediate. So I feel that in theory your wife should be getting something more from her aid(s) and if she isn’t then there is something extra interfering.

A few thoughts as someone with similar loss and also a hearing aid newbie:

  1. When I put my first hearing aid in each morning, it does still sound tinny and scratchy to me - my interpretation is that I’m suddenly picking up a bunch of ambient noises that are inaudible without the aids and for the first 10 seconds all those extra sounds really DO sound tinny, especially when I’ve only got one aid in. As soon as I put the second aid in, I feel balanced again, and my brain adjusts and decides that the aided sound is the way things should be - it’s hard to describe but it’s honestly as if my brain stops fighting to recognise the sound as coming through the aids and just decides it sounds “right” (and then when I take them out again it’s like people are talking through a pillow). In my case that experience of adjusting from “tinny” to “just right” is clearly a brain thing and not an ear thing or an aid thing. I wonder if the fact that your wife’s loss is unilateral makes it more difficult for her brain to make that switch, because her good ear is still hearing the way good ears do, which is obviously not the same as aided ears, and that could be making it more difficult for her brain to adjust to the aided sound than it is for me with my bilateral loss and equal amplification on both sides. I’m not sure what you could do about that, but it’s something I mention in case it resonates as being part of the explanation.

  2. If I’ve learnt one thing from this forum it’s that fitting makes an enormous difference to the experience you have with a hearing aid - probably more difference than which aid you choose. So it’s worth spending significant time getting the audiologist to get the fit right (by which I of course mean the way the software is set to correct the loss and not the different domes etc., though those too may make a difference).

  3. On top of my high frequency loss, which has been relatively stable for years, I also have fluctuating that takes out the low frequencies in one ear until it’s corrected by a course of steroids. When I have a relapse, I get horrible distortion and fullness in that ear and find it really hard to understand anything at all from that ear. During those relapses my 250-1000 range goes down from 20 to 60 , and while that is still not profound, the way I experience it is like I can’t understand anything - it’s as if the pure tone score doesn’t fully reflect how bad it is in my perception. I wonder if your wife is also struggling partly because this is so very sudden and her brain hasn’t had time to learn how to use the ear to its full capacity. My unaided speech recognition score when my audiogram looks like your wife’s (i.e. when I’m not having one of my relapses) is around 90% and having seen your wife’s is lower, I wonder if it is partly because my loss happened over a period of years while hers was instant. I have no idea if this is something that other people with sudden loss experience, but it’s just a thought, as it seems to me her speech recognition should not be worse than mine just looking at alone.

So to summarise… is the good ear actually making it more difficult for the bad ear to get used to things, is the suddenness of the loss part of why she is still struggling because she hasn’t adjusted yet, or is the fit the audiologist has done not right? Just some things to consider, and none of them may resonate! Good luck!

In reply to @Veroda

Both of your questions are about a proper fit.
There is a tolerance of give and take fitting aids but it’s not as big as most people think. Some aids are a little better at dealing with feedback.

When it comes down to it getting the right acoustics without feedback and the correct gain is the trick. It’s a bit of an art.

From your post I would say your fitter is getting very close.

In reply to @Veroda

Yes, moving to a from an open to a changes the sound. With a fully , the low frequencies (that tend to carry volume) leak out of your ear. It won’t necessarily sound less clear if low frequency hearing is good–it might make things more clear.

Managing feedback is either closing the ear or reducing the gain, so you have to balance what’s important to you.

Edited
@raetee said:

I wonder if the fact that your wife’s loss is unilateral makes it more difficult for her brain to make that switch, because her good ear is still hearing the way good ears do

@raetee said:

When I have a relapse, I get horrible distortion and fullness in that ear and find it really hard to understand anything at all from that ear. During those relapses my 250-1000 range goes down from 20 to 60 dB, and while that is still not profound, the way I experience it is like I can’t understand anything - it’s as if the pure tone score doesn’t fully reflect how bad it is in my perception.

I think you could be right on these points… She’s powered through for the last couple of weeks but no matter the dome or the aid adjustment she’s saying she’s not getting much benefit from wearing them. She says she thinks there’s a difference, then takes the aids out and says that no, it’s basically the same with or without them…
It’s really heartbreaking…
We’ll continue on to see if we can get anything out of the aids and we were wondering if there are non-widex tips/domes that people would recommend for small ear canals? This is what she says about her testing on fit so far:

Xs Open dome - nice fit but not enough volume
S - really occluded and too big, was popping out. No xs
Medium tulip - fits but got stuck in my ear first time.moves a lot when I smile etc.no smaller tulip. Feels quite big in my ear, struggle to forget about it…seems to give more volume. Struggle with clarity on

Thanks again all

A hearing aid would need to be refit to account for open versus . If the open dome is a nice fit but not loud enough compared to the closed, but the hearing aid was set up for a closed fit. . . it’s still a bit of an open question as to whether she could get some of that volume back if it were refit for an open dome. It’s possible that the feedback limiting will be too dramatic, but I can’t know over the internet.

She could try a custom tip, but it sounds like she has a pretty small ear which makes me suspect that a custom tip would be too occluding given her ear canal size and her hearing loss.

What’s she wearing right now? Signia/Widex have some nice small vented sleeves that do okay in a small ear. Sometimes you can hack a dome from one manufacturer onto another hearing aid if the fit isn’t too loose (too loose will fall off on the ear).

In reply to @Veroda

I have absolutely no idea if ears that have experienced sudden loss can be kind of “trained” to maximise what hearing remains, but I definitely imagine that is more difficult when there is still a good ear that ends up taking over most of the work. I’m of course not talking about improving the loss such that the would look any different, but rather training the brain to understand what’s coming from the bad ear. I just feel that if you have fairly equal bilateral loss like I do, the brain has no option but to use what’s left, but if it’s unilateral and maybe a bit distorted, the brain just goes “nah, don’t like that, let’s not use it”. I’d love to hear from others on this forum with widely differing ears whether they find the better ear does most of the work or whether they do find that (maybe especially with the right correction from ) they do use both ears.

If it were me, I might try wearing an earplug in the good ear for a day or two and listening to a lot of something like speech radio at the very limit of understandability, just to see if it forces the bad ear to do a bit of the work. Maybe this is a ridiculous idea but at least I’m hopefully not suggesting anything that can do any harm.

No idea about Widex domes but others on here will know.

@Neville said:

What’s she wearing right now?

She’s wearing a widex tulip on a widex hearing aid but it’s been set up for an open dome. The audiologist said he thought she was just getting away with the open dome, feedback wise, so he didn’t think he could increase the gain anymore on an open dome. She tried a small before this but it occluded and popped out of her ear

Thanks as always for the suggestions

@raetee said:

I’d love to hear from others on this forum with widely differing ears whether they find the better ear does most of the work or whether they do find that (maybe especially with the right correction from HAs) they do use both ears.

Yes same here! We’re also starting to think that the has done more damage than the is showing… Really not sure where to go from here

@raetee said:

I’d love to hear from others on this forum with widely differing ears whether they find the better ear does most of the work or whether they do find that (maybe especially with the right correction from HAs) they do use both ears.

I think it’s kinda like having a dominant eye for shooting etc. I don’t think I could hit the broad side of a barn shooting using my right eye.
In my case, it is the same thing with my ears. If I am not concentrating…I would tell you that my left ear only is hearing, but if I’m paying attention I can tell that sound is coming from both sides. This is very clear in the mornings when my right hearing aid is put on after the left one is already on.

I have permanent distortion in my left ear.
If you have distortion in an ear, the aid will amplify the distortion.
This can be hard to get use to. Especially when your own voice is distorted in your head. Loud and clear. Usually annoyingly so.
I’ve worn aids for seven years.
I still find it hard to get use to.
Some of my experiences.
If I’m facing someone or looking at TV the distortion is not too noticeable.
If the sound comes in from my left than it’s distorted.
I do hear better with my right ear even though my says they are close.
Beeps do not take distortion into consideration.
Out of eleven audiologist only two figured out something s wrong with the left.
The last one was the only one to use the automated voice for word testing. She also was the only one to use a different volume.
The others scream the words into the mic.
If it’s loud enough I usually can make it out in the left ear.
Went to a very noisy funeral. My nephew was talking to me.
He was on my left side.
I turned so I could hear him in my right ear.
I could understand him a lot better.
So after all this I do believe my right ear
does a lot more work then the left.
I keep saying this.
If she has permanent distortion she can adapt.
She has to hang in there and give it time. It won’t be easy.

@Veroda, I just came across your post. Here’s some information on my journey with . (BTW, I’m in the US).

Back in 2015 I woke up one day with reduced hearing in my Right ear. After about 3 weeks of a doctor treating it as an ear infection, I ended up with an specialist about an hour from me. I had an done prior to seeing the ENT, which showed nothing unusual. He did an Intratympanic steroid injection into my right ear, as well as a 10 day regime of oral steroids. This didn’t help me.

This loss caused a moderate to severe loss in the low frequencies, and moderate in the mid frequencies, with no loss in the high frequencies. Over the course of about two years, It ended up shifting to what I have now, which is mostly severe across all frequencies, with a slight slope down. (see my )

My initial symptoms were a lot of distortion in sounds from the right ear. For example: any mostly loud noise would sound like pans banging together. Other noises could sound like aluminum foil noises. I could still understand voices and TV etc. And at the time, since it was mainly the lower frequencies affected, I didn’t pursue a hearing aid.

As mentioned above, my hearing in the right ear would progressively change - the lower frequencies started coming back, and twice I lost enough in the mid/higher frequencies that I got emergency appointments with the ENT. He did one more try at the steroids, but then the third time I had a major change, we decided not to do that since it hadn’t helped the two times before.

The Pots and Pans and other distortion went away probably in the first 3 to 4 months. And after that I didn’t have any issues with distortion, even when I had other changes happening.

Initially, my on the right ear was somewhere near 85% at (I think) 65db. Today I’m at 55% at 90db. However, I’ve been mostly stable with both WRS and the loss iteslf for about 3 years now. So I’m hopeful no additional major changes.

My hearing aid history: about two years in as I was losing some of the mid/high range, I started with a single hearing aid on the right ear. That was useful. However after it got worse again, I decided to go for a pair of hearing aids to [try to] help in localizing sounds, as well as [trying to] understand in restaurants better. I’m currently using a Jabra Enhance with M&, but will be moving to the newest Jabra soon.

I’ve found that with my left ear being pretty good overall (I think close to what your wife is experiencing with the difference between her good and bad ear)… that I do have to ‘figure out’ how well the hearing aid on the right is working. When trying to determine how well the is working, I’ll take my left one out and put an ear plug in. I’ll then usually just use the TV as “can I understand what people are saying”. I also can VERY MUCH tell the difference - much more tinny in the voices on the right ear. I do not however notice that when listening with both ears. So my goal here is to get the right HA to a level where I can understand the words. And then wear both hearing aids on the assumption that getting those signals into the right ear is helpful long term.

Sorry for the long append here!! but I hope some of the information will prove useful to you and your wife. Ask any questions if you have them!!

Thanks for all the input as usual guys
@narenkona , thanks for the detail, that’s really helpful and we’re going to take your advice and maybe wear an earplug in the good ear to really try to understand what the is doing because she is going from “it does a little bit I think” to “it’s literally doing nothing”. By removing the good ear as much as possible hopefully we’ll get a more accurate depiction of what’s going on

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