Hearing aid expectations

• The key is not the type of hearing loss a person has, but its severity. Some peoples' hearing loss is so far gone that no matter how much sound intensity is directed into their ears, there's not enough hearing left to respond.
• Other persons have trouble understanding speech because of neurological problems of the brain, rather than to ear disorders. These are called central hearing impairments. They do not characteristically show any loss of hearing sensitivity (unless, of course, their condition exists simultaneously with an identifiable hearing impairment). Once the neural pathways within the central auditory system are affected with this condition, certain listening behaviors usually permanently affected. Damage to these areas can result in an impairment of the ability to localize sound or the ability to perceive and attend to speech in difficult listening situations. Hearing aids, while still beneficial, will not help the as much as they would other, more common type losses.
• In rare cases, some hearing aid systems may distort normal sounds to the extent that amplification offers only louder distortion of what they already hear.
• Some people have loudness tolerance problems that may put too great a limit on the level of amplification that can be accepted.