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Problem with functioning of hearing aid - please help :(

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Hello, so to start with — about a month ago I bought a Phonak Audéo L70 for one ear, because I have a 40% hearing loss in my right ear. After a one-week trial period, I decided it was worth purchasing. Unfortunately, I need to share a few problems with you.

When I first got the device, everything was perfect — my brain slowly got used to it, the sound became natural, and overall I was hearing better. Unfortunately, after about a week of use, one morning the hearing aid suddenly started to whistle, so I decided to take a day off from wearing it.

However, after that day, the problem didn’t go away. In fact, I felt as if something was blocking the sound from getting through from the device into my ear — like there was a wall or something in the way. So I went to the doctor, they cleaned my ear, and after that it worked fine again for a few days.

Unfortunately, the same thing happened again a few days ago, and now I can barely hear anything through the hearing aid and it keeps whistling again. I have a very narrow ear canal, and my audiologist gave me a .

Is it possible that if I want to keep wearing the hearing aid, I’ll have to go for an ear cleaning every week? Is this normal? Isn’t there another solution?

I’m quite sad and nervous about this, because the hearing aid really helped me — I was hearing almost like a normal person. But with this problem, it’s really frustrating…

Please, has anyone had similar experiences? What should I do first? Do I really need to go for weekly ear cleanings? :confused: I also tried to change filter several times, but with no improvement :frowning:

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I doubt it is ear wax, maybe a incorrect dome or a faulty receiver. Did you purchase the aid through the said doctor? Whoever you got it from,you should go back and get them to try different domes, or if that does not cure it change the receiver. Failing that you may require a custom mould.

Does the hearing aid need cleaning because of a blockage caused by ear wax?
A friend of mine got new hearing aids of the type and the audiologist did not tell him about replacing the guards that catch the ear wax - after 2 weeks he went back to the audiologist complaining the hearing aids were not working, and it turned out to be the were blocked up with wax so no sound was getting through to the receivers.

If you go back to the doctor and have your ear cleaned and that fixes it AGAIN for a while, then yes you probably need to discuss your best options for regular at-home wax management to allow you to consistently use your devices.

Anecdotally, wax does sometimes seem to increase for a while with new hearing aids and then calm down a bit.

The cause of the whistling is that your had been configured when they sat slightly different in your ears. And, yes, your ear canal being more or less “slippery” affects how the earpieces fit. But this is not really an earwax problem, you need to ask your audi to adjust your HA for a reconfiguration with your day-to-day fit. When in automatic mode, Target tends to leave HAs whistling in some cases, so your audi needs to do some manual tinkering (had the same problem, solved this in Target myself).
Note also that fiddling with the ear canal will stimulate wax production- focus on the HAs instead.

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