Hearing aids

A hearing aid amplifies sounds so that they are audible but not uncomfortably loud. It should be selected and set up to meet personal needs and degree of hearing loss.

Most sounds such as speech are made up of a range of different frequencies; for example, low frequency sounds such as vowels and high frequency consonant sounds. Different patterns and degrees of hearing loss will affect a person's ability to hear different frequencies.

Generally speaking, as you get older your hearing deteriorates in the higher frequencies making the consonant sounds in speech more difficult to hear. This often leads to a situation where it is possible to hear that something is being said, but difficult to understand clearly what has been said. This is particularly true in background noise.

A hearing aid is designed to cope with the sounds that make up speech and should be selected to provide more amplification in the frequencies where they are needed most in order to optimise speech understanding.

The roll-out of NHS digital hearing aids throughout the UK was completed in 2005. However in some areas waiting lists to obtain them are still very long, though efforts are being made to bring these down. The Department of Health currently estimates that some 250,000 people are waiting for either a first assessment or a reassessment of their hearing loss.

While the basic style of NHS aids has not changed in that most aids are still behind-the-ear models, many are much smaller than before.