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Hearing aid tubing

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I am new to this forum. I have Widex Mind hearing aids and the sound is great. However, the tubing that goes from the behind the hearing aid to the mold in the ear is very stiiff. I do not like the way the tubing fits around my ear. To my eye, the tubing is obvious when it is advertised to be almost invisable. Friends of mine have hearing aids from other manufacturers who use smaller more flexible tubing which realy is almost invisable. I am going back to see my audiologist next week and I hope this forum can give me sugestions to solve this issue before my visit with the audiologist.
Much thanks, ed3325

I guess we’d need to know what sort of tubing you have and what type of mould or dome it goes into. Are any of your friends with tubes that are more pleasing to your eye wearing a Widex brand? If not then it may just be that Widex has bigger tubing, but it could also be that you have been fitted with wider tubing due to your hearing loss or your choice of mould, or that your tubing is not the correct size for you. If it’s not the right length to fit you then it will not fit snugly into the inside track of your pinna (ear-flaps!) and will be more obvious.

Did the audiologist seem to hang the aid on your ear and choose an appropriate tubing size or just pull one from a box/have it ready on the table for you when you arrived? I always get size 2 tubing as it’s the most common size for women. I have to make sure I ask for a size 1 else I end up with yards of tubing and flappy hearing aids. If your aids seem insecure behind your ears then ill-fitting tubing is likely. (Some audis have a really good eye for ear sizes, and may have measured without you knowing, but others just stick on the average size for some reason)

And finally you may not have the dome/mould properly inserted so that the tubing lies flat. It should run over the top of your ear close (but not tight) against your ear then lie flat against the crease of the pinna to the head, and then close against the ear all the way around the turn into the ear canal. If you can see the turn in the tubing then it’s either too long or your dome/mould is not inserted properly.

Do any of those sound likely? You could also pull up some pictures of your hearing aid on the net, maybe the brochure for it, and see if the tubing looks the way yours does.

Ed:

You don’t say which model, but both the “micro” (size 10 battery) and “9” (size 13 battery) versions of the Mind can be configured with EITHER thick or thin tubing. The audiologist just needs to snap off the standard earhook and snap on the thin-tube earset AND needs to reconfigure the devices in the software to be compatible with the “elan” (thin-tube) set-up. Keep in mind, however, that the thin-tube configuration has a smaller fitting range so if your hearing loss is severe, you may be sacrificing some gain, especially in the high frequencies.

Also, if you have custom earmolds, they would have to be re-made or replaced to accommodate the thin tubing. Your audiologist may have set them up with the thicker tubing due to your hearing loss or wax issues (the thin tube can get clogged more easily). Good luck!

Audi

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