Rehabilitative Services and Hearing Aids
Port Huron Hearing and Balance Center offers a range of styles and technology levels meeting your listening needs and budget.
Hearing Aids
Technology and lifestyle affect your choice
Hearing aid sizes range from completely in the ear (ITE) to behind the ear (BTE).
Due to wear and tear, exposure to cerumen and the temperature in the ear canal, ITE aids usually perform for 3-5 years. BTE hearing aids last longer needing minor modifications due to the ear growing slightly over time. Technology and multiple microphones have improved a patient’s ability to localize and lateralize multiple sound sources in any size of hearing aid. This makes selecting the size more of a cosmetic decision, than aerodynamic need to place the microphone at the point of the concha.
The level of technology depends on the patient’s hearing loss, listening needs, situation, and expectations
Even ten years ago most hearing aids were simply analog. If the single microphone received a sound, whether speech or the refrigerator running the hearing aid amplified it and created the complaint that hearing aids are “noisy”. When a patient has an active lifestyle with even moderately challenging listening situations, they perform better with more advanced technology. It provides them with higher fidelity, a multiple band signal processing system, multi-channel compression and other features for a comfortable, pleasant listening experience.
Examples of Hearing Aids
There are a large variety of hearing aids to choose from, depending on your lifestyle and needs. Let our audiologists help you select the perfect one. Here you will find some examples of the common types of hearing aids, and you may wish to visit Phonak, Unitron, and Oticon for additional information.
Get The Most Benefit From Your Hearing Aid
Communication strategies and tips
Most importantly – wear your hearing aids! Without making yourself uncomfortable in the adjustment process, build up to wearing the hearing aids all day. This will give your brain consistency in all the auditory information it receives.
Be patient
Gain the listener’s attention before speaking
Rephrase and enunciate versus repeating
Look at the person you are speaking to and keep objects (hand, cigarettes, etc) away from your mouth when speaking
Have your conversation in the same room as your listener
Position yourself with light on your face to enable the listener to gain speech reading cues from your face
Use written message when unable to verbally communicate your message

Top communication strategies for success
Again – wear them. Without making yourself uncomfortable in the adjustment process, build up to wearing the hearing aids all day. This will give your brain consistency in all the auditory information it receives.
Do not try and have a conversation from another room. Eye contact is just as important as it ever was and sound does not travel through walls or around corners well.
When you are listening in noise, face the speaker you want to hear and position the majority of the noise behind you. In a restaurant, booths are more helpful than tables to reduce unwanted sounds, conduct your conversations off to the side when in a noisy environment.
When attending religious gatherings, lectures, plays, etc sit as close to the front as possible. This will give you better visual cues and provide you with less reverberating sounds (echoes).
Ask the person speaking to rephrase what they have said if you do not fully understand.
Practice assertive communication skills and let people you know that you have a hearing loss.
Having patience goes a long way. Try to remember that no one hears everything correctly all the time.
Do I need two hearing aids?
For almost everyone, the answer is YES!
Having two ears working and having them on each side of the head gives us advantages.