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How to decide if hearing aids are keepers?

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I know that hearing aids will never help me hear the way I did before I needed them. I know they are just an aid. I have never had a pair that helped me consistently understand speech. In the past I have worn Phonak-2 pair, Oticon 2 pair and Starkey. I am currently trying a pair of Philips Hearlink 9040s. My old hearing aids were shot and my hearing deteriorated since I first got them. These are much better than what I had. I hear all kinds of sounds I wasn’t hearing before. BUT I still don’t do well understanding speech. How do you decide if expectations to understand speech are unreasonable? That it’s as good as it gets? Based on the last almost 30 years, it seems like better than before is the most I can hope for.
Is it? I have always struggled to understand the spoken word. Is that my answer?
Unreasonable expectations? Be thankful for better? Thoughts?

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I have been wearing aids 20 years. My aids are from the as I am a veteran with service related hearing loss. My experience is that the audiologist is the largest part of the answer you can have the besrlt aids created but if your audiologist isn’t the best there is you are still not going to be hearing the best you can.

Do you know what your word recognition scores are? (Given as % correct at a level) If you’re scoring 80% or better you should be able to understand most speech in quiet. If you’re 60% or under, you might be a candidate for cochlear implants. This is oversimplified, but word recognition scores would give us useful info.

In reply to @Janine

My aids are from the and I have been to 4 different clinics in 2 different states. What is unique about the VA now is that regardless of the clinic I go to they have my records and information. But audiologist that have fitted me aids or made adjustments I have only had 3 audiologist, all full doctors of audiology. On of the audiologist at the first VA clinic I only saw once due to moving the second audiologist I had for over 8 years, and due to moving again the audiologist I have now I have had 6 years. In my experience the right audiologist is the most important factor. And yes I had a very bad one before I was able to get my aids from the VA. A bad audiologist can make the very best aids be wrong for the user, and the very best audiologist can make lesser aids be great for the user.

In reply to @Janine

With those word recognition scores I’d seriously consider getting a cochlear implant evaluation. If you’re in the US it should be covered by insurance. Getting an evaluation in no way commits you but it would give you a lot of info. If out of the US I have no idea. I’m not sure what is meant by Speech recognition but if it’s (speech recognition threshold) that’s the sound level in which you get half of speech.

It was . Thanks for the explanation. I’m not in the US and while much cheaper here, are still unaffordable.

In reply to @Janine

@Janine said:

Word recognition was 44% at 95 db and 56% at 100 db

100 is well-audible for your loss. So, this roughly indicates that 56% is about your maximum performance for understanding speech without lip-reading and without context clues in a quiet, ideal listening environment. There is no expectation that hearing aids will improve this, as they can boost volume but not clarity, but they also should not make this worse.

Thank you! That makes it sound like hearing “better than before”, even without good speech recognition is the best I can do so the hearing aids are keepers. :slight_smile:

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