Anyone with hearing problems has always wondered: should I buy two hearing aids or one is enough? The eternal dilemma. Like almost everything in audiology, there is no single answer to this question, but we will try to give you resources so you can make the decision that makes you feel more comfortable and better hear.

In general, we recommend the use of two hearing aids, because the second hearing aid is the one that will give us the binaural hearing (with both ears), which is as we heard when we have no hearing loss, and because adaptation to sound environment with two hearing aids is much easier. If we recover binaural hearing, we will improve speech understanding and group discussions. Therefore, we will achieve the main objective of audiology: improve communication.

Listening with two hearing aids also provides a more homogeneous sound, a balanced hearing, which will increase the quality of sounds and, therefore, make it easier to identify them.

In addition, the second hearing aid provides better directionality (or location), which helps determine the source of the sounds. Therefore, there are cases of people wearing a hearing aid in one ear where they have total loss, in order to transmit the sounds they receive from that side to the other hearing aid, to the healthy ear, and so to ensure they hear everything around them.

However, if one of the two ears is healthy or almost healthy, the second hearing aid stops making sense and you can save it. It is estimated that when the ear with lower loss approaches 25%, is when it starts to be advisable to use the second hearing aid.

There is also the case of some very elderly people for whom all these benefits provided by two hearing aids are not relevant because of their lifestyle. To them we do not recommend spending a second high-end hearing aid but rather two instruments of a basic range that simply avoiding them suffering from isolation and being communicated with their environment as much as possible.

And, as we always say, and will repeat as many times as needed, the last word always is yours. Your own experience is the most important, so ask your audiologist to let you try wtih only one hearing aid and with two, and listen to yourself.