When hearing loss starts to become noticeable, patients sometimes describe having a “good ear” and a “bad ear.” It often seems like one side is worse than the other, which raises a good question: is it possible you might only need one hearing aid instead of two? Dr. Sara Hanley, Au.D. shares her thoughts on this potential solo strategy. Watch more Q&As, then schedule your appointment with BNA at our Bloomington-Normal or Pontiac, IL offices.
William in Normal asks, “If I can tell one ear is worse than the other, can I just get one hearing aid?” My answer to that is… maybe. But there are a lot of different situations. The first thing that I would recommend doing is actually getting some type of screening or hearing test done first. If you do a screener first and it does confirm there is some difference, I do recommend following up with more of a diagnostic hearing test. Because yes, we do first want to rule out any medical concern or problem causing that difference between the ears. Once that has been done, if we find, you know… maybe you DO have normal hearing in one ear and the hearing loss is only in the other. Then in THAT situation, we maybe would just do one hearing aid, and that would make sense. But if you do have hearing loss in both ears, and it’s just WORSE in one ear, I would still recommend two hearing devices. So to wrap up, if you do feel like one ear is worse than the other, I would first do either a screener online to see if there is a difference. Definitely get a diagnostic hearing test. Determine if there’s a medical problem causing the loss, and then move forward with hearing devices from there. I’m Dr. Sara Hanley from Bloomington-Normal Audiology, and we’re ‘hear’ for you.