H/A vs. C/I

A

Adam

New Member
Joined
Mar 21, 2008
Messages
85
Reaction score
0
Hello all,
This is my first post, I will introduce myself in my next post, here is my question.

I am a little confused about cochlear implants and hearing aids. I have read some different blogs one of which is Chronicles of a bionic woman. They all have been very informative. I have already bugged Abbie enough so I will post this question here. It is my understanding that doctors will not implant a C/I if you can still benefit from H/A's but I have read posts where there are aids that are strong enough and the people have the choice to choose a cochlear implant or the aid. I assume there is a difference between a hearing aids power and your ability to understand the sounds the hearing aid is amplifying?
I can try to rephrase if I am not being very clear.

Adam
 
It'll vary with different CI centers I would guess.

Right now, with my current hearing aid, I have difficulty hearing speech well enough to actually understand it, so I was looking into the cochlear implant in hopes that it would help improve with hearing the speech sounds. But then when I saw there was a new hearing aid with even more features than my current one, with it having Sound Recover which helps boost some of the harder-to-hear speech sounds, that just might be the answer for me.

Hearing aids amplify EVERYTHING, but sometimes it amplifies too much for the user and it's just all noise to them, or the hearing aid simply just isn't enough for them (as in, they can hear, but they're not hearing voices/speech well). The cochlear implant doesn't amplify, it bypasses the non-working part of your ear, and sends the sounds the processor picks up straight to the nerve cells in the cochlea via the wire electrode that's inserted into the cochlea, and.. yeah. That's just how I understand the differences anyway.
 
Sometimes people's hearing with aids is such that they can "hear" or "perceive" sounds or speech of a certain decibel, but they cannot understand/distinguish the sounds or speech.

Because some people feel that understanding auditory speech is important, they may decide in that case that the hearing aids are not enough, even though they can "hear" the speech...because they cannot distinguish the sounds enough to understand it fully.
 
For tool to wear and remove....

HA owner, you can go and get in fight or deep underwater, simple take it off.

For CI, none, you have no fun in bash-physical.
 
It's the difference between perception and discrimination.
 
PowerON said:
For tool to wear and remove....

HA owner, you can go and get in fight or deep underwater, simple take it off.

For CI, none, you have no fun in bash-physical.

Research before you shot me. :fingersx:
Click to expand...

uh huh ... I think someone need to research before they shot CI ....


.
 
With HAs, I was making more heavy use of other tools to make sense of conversations such as lipreading and context. It wasn't until I suddenly lost my residual hearing that I considered CIs but I reckoned I could have qualified before, since I always got poor scores on sentence testing with no visual clues.

What CIs did for me was to improve the quality of the audition to the point that the emphasis on reliance on other tools was not quite so essential. And it did so to the point that I could use the phone, whereas previously I couldn't. This sort of qualitative effect is more noticeable with people at profound levels of deafness and not so much at mild/moderate levels since powerful HAs can distort sounds at profound levels.

I think Drewsdad is right. Some people are happy with only hearing environmental sounds or enough to support lipreading, especially if they spend much of their day signing. I suppose it depends on your lifestyle.
 
My days with a HA got to the point where it became very difficult for me to understand speech without having to be in line of sight (i.e., lipreading). That is why I went the CI route so I could get that back. It exceeded all my expectations to the point that I don't need to lipread anymore.

I agree with others that it really all comes down to expectations.
 
I guess CIs are good for people who value being able to hear speech and HAs for those who dont give a rat's ass. LOL! I am severely profoundly deaf and wear hearing aids and dont understand speech with them but fully understand environmental sounds and because I dont care for understanding speech without lip-reading, CIs are not for me. HAs are working for me. :)
 
PowerON said:
oh yeah? Are you tell me CI user can dive that deep without harm? you have tell me! I demand the answer!
Click to expand...

You can't go around demanding everything, it quite rude you know.

First of all you never said "how deep" and yes we CI'er can dive up to 80+ feet deep which is pretty deep without harm. I do know one had went even all way to 110 feet but still no harm and with little skin soreness. The CI manfacturers put a limit of 82 feet on it to avoid libabity.

And It not common to be diving more than 40 feet unless you are diving for commerical reasons.

The more deeper you dive the shorter time you are allowed to stay underwater and also diving is a very expensive hobby so how many deaf people you actually know that could afford such hobby?

So basically you are using "diving" as one of the excuses as to why nobody shouldn't get a CI when diving isn't a widespread or a everyday thing when in fact CI'er still can enjoy the hobby.

Next time try asking nicely instead of demanding, you'll be quite suprise how people will reponse to you.


.
 
I don't see why some people make such a big deal about scuba diving anyway. I've never scuba dived in my life, let alone go beyond 80 feet. I cannot think of a single one of my hearing friends that goes diving that deep either and I know a lot of people. Fine, if someone is a deep scuba diver, I'd understand but it's not a very common hobby/occupation.

I think the Great Barrier Reef, which is off the coast of Northern Australia is pretty shallow and there would be no problems for CIers scuba diving there. Maybe one day I'll do it. They say that it's being damaged by pollution and one day it will die.
 
Ditto on the last two posters about scuba diving.

:roll: Big fat hairy deal if one can only go 80+ feet with CI. There is enough to see in shallower waters. Heck, I have done snorkeling once in Cancun prior to my CI and that is all I probably would do nowadays.

To base one's quality of life with a CI on the limitation scuba diving is the height of silliness. I have better things to do than to worry about that.
 
R2D2 said:
I think the Great Barrier Reef, which is off the coast of Northern Australia is pretty shallow and there would be no problems for CIers scuba diving there. Maybe one day I'll do it. They say that it's being damaged by pollution and one day it will die.
Click to expand...

Great barrier reef is already wasted from what I have been told by scuba divers on trips to areas in pacific sea. Fortunately it's many praised places around australia for snorkeling, and it's not far to indonesia and the islands in the pacific. Comparing my dives from all over the world, the south east asia area is truly impressive, especially remote islands and sites only available with liveaboard. Lots of good snorkeling sites in the pacific, too.
 
Adam said:
Hello all,
This is my first post, I will introduce myself in my next post, here is my question.

I am a little confused about cochlear implants and hearing aids. I have read some different blogs one of which is Chronicles of a bionic woman. They all have been very informative. I have already bugged Abbie enough so I will post this question here. It is my understanding that doctors will not implant a C/I if you can still benefit from H/A's but I have read posts where there are aids that are strong enough and the people have the choice to choose a cochlear implant or the aid. I assume there is a difference between a hearing aids power and your ability to understand the sounds the hearing aid is amplifying?
I can try to rephrase if I am not being very clear.

Adam
Click to expand...


I think, in the past, doctors did not want to implant ci's to people that could benefit from HA's(i.e. people that still had residual hearing) because they believed the implant surgery would destroy any remaining residual hearing on that side. So that rather limits the ability to choose a ci then go back to a ha. I am not certain if that's still the reason because i received my c.i. so many years ago. But, I know that most recent news I have read say c.i. doesn't destroy residual hearing after all. So that's maybe some question you want to ask regarding the ci vs ha
 
Adam said:
Hello all,
This is my first post, I will introduce myself in my next post, here is my question.

I am a little confused about cochlear implants and hearing aids. I have read some different blogs one of which is Chronicles of a bionic woman. They all have been very informative. I have already bugged Abbie enough so I will post this question here. It is my understanding that doctors will not implant a C/I if you can still benefit from H/A's but I have read posts where there are aids that are strong enough and the people have the choice to choose a cochlear implant or the aid. I assume there is a difference between a hearing aids power and your ability to understand the sounds the hearing aid is amplifying?
I can try to rephrase if I am not being very clear.

Adam
Click to expand...

Like Jillio was saying that there can be a difference between perception and discrimination between hearing aids and CI. Doctors wanted to make sure that you more likely to get better discrimination with a CI if your discrimination with hearing aids is very low. Having the very best high power hearing aids does not mean that you can understand speach without lipreading.
There is a limit on how much improvement that you can do with a "Impaired auditory system" without direct medical intervention. But then again there people that are quite happy with high power aids because of differing expectations. By the same token there are people that are hearing quite well with assistive technology but still feeling something missing but that another topic.
 
vallee said:
ditto too.

As long as they don't take my scrapbooking away, I'm okay.
Click to expand...

LOL! :giggle: I wish you could come over and finish my daughter's scrapbook for me. She is 5 and I still haven't completed it!
 
flip said:
Great barrier reef is already wasted from what I have been told by scuba divers on trips to areas in pacific sea. Fortunately it's many praised places around australia for snorkeling, and it's not far to indonesia and the islands in the pacific. Comparing my dives from all over the world, the south east asia area is truly impressive, especially remote islands and sites only available with liveaboard. Lots of good snorkeling sites in the pacific, too.
Click to expand...

:( about the Great Barrier Reef. But yes, Australia and the pacific has many amazing and colourful fish so I can see how it could be a snorkler's paradise. Maybe one day! :)
 
but I have read posts where there are aids that are strong enough and the people have the choice to choose a cochlear implant or the aid. I assume there is a difference between a hearing aids power and your ability to understand the sounds the hearing aid is amplifying?
Click to expand...
Well sometimes, someone who is an ambigious canidate may have severe tintitas or recruitment. CI implantation can help with those types of problems.....and that's a good thing. I however, really do think that many ambigious canidates should first experiment with a whole bunch of different types of hearing aids.
Folks who would be "right off the bat" canidates for CI, should definitly not encounter any hassle. However, there is somewhat of a "vibe" that the CI is basicly the latest greatest hearing technology, almost exactly like what they were doing with digital aids about ten years ago. Some people really have fallen for the hype about CI. I really honestly think that with the fact that hearing aid response is so indidual, that ambigious canidates should go through an intensive "hearing aid" clinic, to totally insure that there isn't a really good hearing aid, that might be as good as a CI.
I also think they should tighten up implantation requirement criteria at the various and sundry implant clinics. Some people are almost doing the "designer health care route to try to qualify for CI.
 
Back
Top