Troubleshooting Your Hearing Aid

While all hearing aids will need to be periodically serviced over time in order to maintain peak effectiveness, a sudden drop in the quality or volume delivered by your hearing aid can often be corrected with a few simple steps you can do at home. Try these troubleshooting tips if your hearing aid is not working as well as you expect it to be:

• Check the battery. Batteries don’t last forever, and sometimes they give out before you would expect them to, whether because of unusually heavy use, or just the difference between brands. A battery tester is a worthwhile investment if you have hearing aids, but replacing the battery is your go-to step if you don’t have one and your hearing aid stops working. Also, double check that your battery is not inserted upside down…even after replacing the battery dozens of times, it’s easy to insert them incorrectly and not notice, due to their small size.
• Check for wax. It’s an inescapable fact that hearing aids are going to get a build up of ear wax residue over time, and this can significantly impact their function. Look carefully at your hearing aid, under a magnifying glass if necessary, to see if it needs cleaning. If it seems gummed up with wax, use the cleaning tool that came with it according to the manufacturer’s instructions. If it didn’t come with instructions or you don’t remember them, ask your audiologist to help you develop an effective cleaning routine for your hearing aids.
• Change your wax guard. Most hearing aids these days come with wax guards, which protect the speaker part of your hearing aid from wax build up, and in many cases from moisture as well. How often you need to change the guards varies widely from person to person, so you’ll need to have a good look at yours on a regular basis at first so that you can get an idea of how often you need to change it. When looking at the “cup” part of the wax guard, look for a set of small holes (again, use a magnifying glass, if needed). If you can’t see them, or you see a coating of wax, it’s probably time to change the guard. Here are examples of both a clean hearing aid, and one in which the wax guard is completely obscured by wax:
  
• On repeat? If you find that you are having to clean the wax from your hearing aid and/or wax filters shortly after having cleaned it before, you may want to make an appointment with your audiologist to have your ears cleaned.

If you follow these tips and your hearing aids are still not functioning as it should, it’s time to make an appointment with your audiologist to have them serviced. A good audiologist will be happy to help, and will be able to guide you in what maintenance steps you can take to continue to get the most out of your aids.