If you have seen hearing aids advertising as you drive in town, you could be rocked thinking that these specialized windows are the only way to buy them. Not the case. In 2022, the United States Food and Drug Administration paved the way for the sale of over-the-counter hearing aids, which means that consumers now have a wide variety of points of sale from which they can buy these devices.
If you choose to visit a retail audiology center – whether it is a small showcase in a more official shopping center or medical office – you will start the process with a medical examination in which audiology will physically check your ears, then test your audience in a specialized room. This audience test lasts about 15 minutes and consists in listening to pings played at different frequencies and volumes. Once finished, the audiologist uses it to create a card of your audiogram called audiogram, which in turn is used to program the prescription hearing aids which, ostensibly, the audiologist will sell you later. The audiologist can then adjust the hearing aid parameters over time if you need additional support.
If you choose to give up this process and buy high -end hearing aids in a retail channel, you will miss the physical exam, but you will probably still have access to an audience test, delivered online or via an application. With these tests, you first buy your selected hearing aids. Once you have installed them in your ears, you do a similar type of test to program them, with the pings delivered by the aids you have just bought. The resulting audiogram is often surprisingly precise compared to that created by a audiologist. And like prescription aid, hearing aid companies often have a audiologist for staff who can distance environments remotely.
Many less expensive hearing aids – under the price level of $ 300 – generally do not include audience testing technology like this, or if they do, it may exist more limited. The user is left to their own devices to program them to their liking.
