The Hearing Aid as Fashion Statement - Continued
Richard Bennett, 60, a banker who lives in Punta
Gorda, Fla., is one of those customers. He hesitated before the
purchase. “It was four months of soul searching,” he said. “I felt I
couldn’t possibly be old enough to need a hearing aid.”
He finally bought a pair of Deltas at Audiology Consultants of
Southwest Florida in Cape Coral, and left its office with them on. “I
could hear the keys in my pocket making noise,” he said. His color of
choice was gray, to match his hair. “I wouldn’t choose alligator
skin,” he said. “That’s not me.”
He now wears the devices morning to night. “I put them in a little
before sunrise, before I walk the dog, so that I can listen to the
birds,” he said.
The hearing aid must be working fairly well: Mr. Bennett was
speaking on a cellphone when being interviewed, and though the
connection was poor, he had no difficulties.
OTHER companies make unobtrusive, behind-the-ear hearing aids with
the same underlying approach, called open-fit. These devices leave
most of the ear canal open, avoiding the “bottled in” feeling of
hearing aids that cover the canal. Phonak, a Swiss company,
includes among its products the microSavia, a tiny open-fit aid that
has its instrumentation behind the ear, bringing the sound into the
ear through a slim tube.
The Delta, though also a behind-the-ear device, separates the tiny
speaker from the main unit behind the ear and tucks it instead into a
small portion of the ear canal. But putting the speaker there could
lead to problems if users removed the speakers from their ears and
then handled them carelessly, said David A. Fabry, vice president for
professional relations and education at Phonak’s United States
headquarters in Warrenville, Ill. “If they stick them in a pocket,
they could be damaged.”
On the contrary, Mr. Wilson said, the speakers are designed to be
extremely robust. “You can stretch and bend them,” he said. “They are
tough.”
Todd A. Ricketts, an associate professor at Vanderbilt University
who does research on hearing aids, says open-fit devices have become
extremely popular in the past few years. But, he cautioned, the
devices should be worn primarily by people with high-frequency loss.
“The potential negative,” he said, “is overselling this technology to
people who have hearing loss in the low pitches or frequencies.”
The Oticon devices may be expensive, but Robert Gamble of Cloquet,
Minn., is pleased with them. “I never thought I’d pay $6,000, but
that’s what I’ve done and it’s well worth it,” he said.
He also got an additional benefit from the Deltas: “I graduated from
Princeton. The colors there are orange and black, and I made it a
point to choose orange” for the devices, he said. “People do notice.
I’m enjoying that.”
Source: New York Times, Sunday Business, 09/24/06
Last Updated: 11/27/2008
