When it comes to enjoying Hearing aids, comfort turns out to be quite an important factor. It is still an object that you have lodged in your ear for many hours a day. One of the most important challenges for a good audiologist is to achieve the perfect balance between the user's hearing and the user's comfort. In this post, we will explain the reasons why there are times when users have a feeling of plugging in their ears and if it can be solved in some way.

The occlusion effect ...

In childhood, everyone has voluntarily covered their ears, be it out of curiosity, playing or arguing with friends on the playground. We all remember how our voice booms more, we listen to the outside less and the little we hear sounds very different from reality. The fact that our voice booms more is due to a physical phenomenon that we call occlusion. This happens since the sound of our own voice cannot escape from inside the ear. This is exactly the same thing that can happen with hearing aids that physically close your ear. And in the case of hearing aids, another important factor is added to this sensation: the sound emitted by the hearing aid itself.

…it can be fixed

The solution to this problem is apparently simple: do not completely plug the ear canal. For this, depending on the type of hearing aid, there are several types of solutions:

  • Intra-canal hearing aids: This type of custom-made hearing aid allows a ventilation duct to be incorporated at the time of manufacture to allow sound to escape.
  • BTE hearing aids with custom mold: as with the intra-canals, we can add a ventilation duct to the mold to avoid this sensation.
  • RIC hearing aids: in the case of this type of hearing aids, we can choose between different types of tulips or couplers, some being more ventilated than others.

These solutions are specific for each case since we can decide different sizes of ventilation depending on the loss that you present. Audiologists and users should keep in mind that the more ventilated a hearing aid is, the more likely it is to beep. That is why, at the beginning of the post, we told you that audiologists must find the right point between comfort and hearing. This search for balance is given because it is the user's own loss that sets us the necessary volume and, in some cases, limits us when it comes to ventilating the ear more or less. On the other hand, when we encounter this limitation, we always have the option of trying to avoid this effect by programming the hearing aid itself but evaluating and suspecting the advantages and disadvantages that this way of programming will bring us.

At Claso, as always, we like to speak clearly. Rest assured that we will always explain the specific characteristics of your loss and why we believe that a hearing aid or a configuration of this is the most suitable for you. We will discuss with you the pros and cons of each model or configuration so that, together, we can choose the option that best suits you. So that we find the perfect balance between hearing and comfort.