Hearing Aid Basics

Hearing aids don't restore hearing, they simply amplify sounds and make them louder.

Every hearing aid from the largest to the smallest has several common components, a microphone, amplifier, and a miniature speaker. Most of today's high-tech hearing aids contain very sophisticated circuitry, microprocessors, and microchips. Tremendous advancements have been made in recent years with today's products providing superb sound quality from tiny instruments that are often invisible to most observers. The effectiveness of a hearing aid will depend on the level of hearing loss. With some users, spoken words will become very clear, with others suffering from more severe loss it may only help to identify the slamming of a door or the high pitch of a smoke alarm - which is extremely important for safety reasons.