The difference between hearing aid and cochlear implant

For people with hearing loss, they may have two options: to wear hearing aids or to implant cochlear implants.

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What’s the difference between hearing aids and cochlear implants? What kind of people are they suitable for? Hearing aids and cochlear implants have both similarities and differences. The same thing is that they can both be called hearing aids. They both convert external sound signals into electrical signals through special electronic circuits, and then into sound signals acceptable to the human body. The difference is that the hearing aid is a kind of amplifier, which can fully amplify the external signals, then pass them into the auditory canal of the hearing impaired, through the middle ear, and then into the inner ear auditory receptor, so that the hearing impaired can hear the “amplified” sound. The working principle of cochlear implant is not to amplify the sound, but to apply pulse electric stimulation to the auditory nerve which is located in the cochlea and functions well, so that the patient can pick up the sound again.

Hearing aids are suitable for patients with mild to severe hearing loss. However, due to the different types and qualities of hearing aids, the amplification effect of sound signals is also different, that is, the “fidelity” of sound signals is different. People with hearing impairment will sound different. Cochlear implant is suitable for people with very severe hearing impairment, that is, people who can’t use hearing aids to help. Besides, there are many types of hearing aids, including ear back machine, inner ear machine, ear canal machine, and invisible hearing aids.

Cochlear implant is a kind of electronic device, which transforms sound into electrical signal in a certain coding form by external speech processor, and directly excites the auditory nerve through the electrode system implanted in the body to restore, improve and reconstruct the hearing function of the deaf. In the past 20 years, with the development of high technology, cochlear implant has made rapid progress, and has entered clinical application from experimental research. Nowadays, cochlear implant has been used as a routine method to treat severe deafness to total deafness all over the world. Cochlear implant is the most successful biomedical engineering device. Cochlear implant requires very strict preoperative evaluation, with absolute contraindications and relative contraindications, so not everyone is suitable for cochlear implant. And need to go to a regular hospital for surgery.

Whether wearing hearing aids or cochlear implants, they have to go through a certain period of adaptation. In particular, the precision of the cochlear implant and the sound human cochlear structure is very different, so there will be some differences between the perceived sound and the natural sound. After a long time, the post lingual deaf have to go through several months of rehabilitation training, while the pre lingual deaf (children) have to go through 2-3 years of language rehabilitation, in order to achieve a better effect.

At present, the cost of a cochlear implant plus surgery is about 200000 yuan, and the price of a hearing aid varies from thousands to tens of thousands.

Jinghao hearing aid reminder: hearing aid wearing requires professional “matching”, so it is very important to choose a professional hearing aid matching center and a hearing aid tester! If you have any hearing problems, you can call Jinghao for consultation, or come to the matching center for experience. Hearing aid free consultation Tel.: + 86-18566295705