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When you are experiencing severe hearing loss, you could find yourself trapped in a world of your own. You are left out of conversations and you are socially isolated – whether at work or not – because people constantly repeating themselves means that gradually, you have been shunned. It’s not nice for anyone to go through, but if you are currently in denial about your hearing and how much of it you have lost, then it may be worth thinking about an appointment with a hearing care professional.
Steps Towards Treatment
Today, technology has meant that those who are diagnosed with hearing loss by a hearing health professional are able to get hearing aids, listening aids or cochlear implants. Hearing aids of today are nothing like those of years gone by, with the aids now being able to sit comfortably behind the ear, remaining small and out of sight. Before you can be given any kind of hearing aid or treatment, you need to speak to a hearing care provider, who can assess your symptoms, diagnose the severity of your hearing loss and provide you with treatment. Here are some of those steps:
Getting Assessed
When you start to experience any signs of hearing loss, you need to book an appointment with your hearing care professional. A complete evaluation of the inner and outer ear needs to take place to ascertain where the issue is located. Once that is complete, your hearing care provider can move toward treating the problem. The ear is complex in its structure, so the issue with your hearing loss could be in either the inner, outer or middle ear.
What Are The Treatment Options?
You can only determine your hearing options after you have had a hearing test and an audiogram has assessed your hearing and your hearing care professional has located the issue. So, what are your treatment options? The most popular option is hearing aids. These can be worn behind the ear, in the ear or in the canal, and send electronically amplified sounds into your ear. You won’t get your hearing back, but you may be able to hear better. They are available in a variety of different styles, sizes and offer customizable features to ensure you get the best listening experience possible.
Cochlear and middle ear implants can also treat hearing loss, but are rarer and depends strictly on the type and cause of loss you experience.
There are many more options than these out there, but your hearing care provider can talk you through all the options that would be available to you. Each solution that you are given is going to help you to hear better, but it will not restore your hearing back to what it was.