Further hearing loss with CICs?

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aaferizis

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In my quest for new CICs (I've been wearing two for the past six years), I came across an audiologist/dispenser who seems ADAMANT about not fitting CICs into my left ear, but an ITC (In The Canal), the immediately larger model of aid. He claims that we have to compensate not only for my hearing loss, but the "air to bone gap" that I have.

While I know that with my hearing loss I'd be compromising some sound in speech frequencies by using CICs (see my audiogram below), and I was told this even before I got my current aids, I've never heard that I risk doing MORE damage to my hearing.

My hearing loss hasn't changed for most of my life, and certainly not in the past six years since I got my last audiogram done. So it's only a hypothetical risk, which may or may not happen.

Has anyone else heard anything like this? I've heard that ears can be 'exercised' to some extent -- ie: my stronger left ear could compensate for what is lost from the right ear -- but also that hearing is cumulative and it's the TOTAL dB that matter, not each individual ear.

I'm in my early 30s and obviously appearance is important to me, otherwise I wouldn't consider CICs. I'm almost ready to get larger aids in some flashy colour so they deliberately stick out and that way I don't hide anything or care about people's impressions, but I don't feel quite ready to do that yet.

Any thoughts?

Here's my audiogram:
http://img21.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc95&image=99706_2006_Jan_Audiogram_Small.jpg
(solid line is the air conduction test, dashed line is the bone conduction test)
 
I'm in my early 30s and obviously appearance is important to me, otherwise I wouldn't consider CICs. I'm almost ready to get larger aids in some flashy colour so they deliberately stick out and that way I don't hide anything or care about people's impressions, but I don't feel quite ready to do that yet.
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Can undy that. I remmy when I was a teenager how self-conscious I was about wearing my BTEs. But the thing is that you gotta remember is that they aren't as noticable as the manufactors would have you believe! Trust me.....it's not as if a BTE was a body worn aid or an earhorn!
Ask your audi if they can let you put on a BTE, in the office. Trust me.....they had me put on a BTE.....and I haven't looked back since!
 
deafdyke said:
Can undy that. I remmy when I was a teenager how self-conscious I was about wearing my BTEs. But the thing is that you gotta remember is that they aren't as noticable as the manufactors would have you believe! Trust me.....it's not as if a BTE was a body worn aid or an earhorn!
Ask your audi if they can let you put on a BTE, in the office. Trust me.....they had me put on a BTE.....and I haven't looked back since!
Click to expand...
BTEs are the best for hoh :)
I don't care if somebody can see my aid . It's more important to me to hear better.
 
Would an ITC offer more than a CIC?

Although as a kid I wore a single BTE (until I was able to get two CICs and benefit from binaural hearing), I'm reluctant to get two BTEs because of the 'lifestyle change', mainly being able to listen to music with headphones and use the telephone -- something which was never a problem with my CICs.

Would an ITC aid offer me more than a CIC aid? I'm being recommended an ITC for several Oticon models, and I will also ask the same question fo a Phonak representative today.
 
As a kid, I had bte's (2); and I wanted my hair to be past my earlobes to hide them. In 1980, switched to ite's and late last year, switched back to bte's and the color to match my hair (brown). For my profession, only the tubes will show, so am not worried about that. I have my hair shorter only because I can't stand long hair (on myself) and I always want to look like I'm ready to go on-the-air.
 
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