School of a Specialist on Hearing Aid

Traditional hearing aids work well for people with various degrees of hearing loss, but they can not restore the sound for those people who are profoundly deaf. Cochlear implants work better for people with more serious damages of the ear, because they bypass the damaged parts of the ear and send audio information, like electric signals, directly to the auditory nerve. A cochlear implant can be used separately or in a combination with traditional hearing aids for those people who have a moderate hearing loss in one frequency range, but more severe hearing loss in other frequencies.

Cochlear implants consist of two main systems: an external system and internal system. External system is composed of three parts: speech processor, microphone and transmitter. The internal system includes a receiver and a set of electrodes.

Microphone that is attached to the speech processor captures the sound and sends it to the speech processor, a small device that can be unobtrusively located on the ear. The transmitter is located behind the speech processor and is connected directly to the scalp from the outside, where the internal receiver is implanted under the skin. The transmitter is equipped with a magnet that fixes it to the internal receiver. Instead of being fixed to the scalp and the ear, the external system may also be located in a pocket of a shirt or a special case. The receiver, which is the size of a small coin, is implanted under the skin into the bone behind the ear. And the electrode is a conductor, which runs from the place of penetration into the cochlea.

Microphone picks up a sound and sends it to the speech processor that converts this sound into a digital form. Then, this digital information is sent to the embedded receiver which transforms digital information into electrical signals and sends these signals to the electrodes. The electrodes send these signals directly to the auditory nerves, which then carry the signals to the brain.

New implantable hearing aids bypass the normal hearing process in order to help people with severe hearing loss and a conductive or mixed hearing loss, who can not be helped by ordinary hearing aids. Instead of simple amplifying of the sound, these surgically implanted devices are attached to bones in the middle ear. Bypassing the ear canal and middle ear, Baha hearing aids create vibrations in the skull and transmit these vibrations directly to the cochlea through a process called direct bone conduction.

The development of breakthrough technologies in any case does not mean that the Specialist on Hearing Aid is no longer needed. In contrast, the level of specialist qualification requires increasingly high demands: in order the patient to be able to enjoy all the benefits of high-tech hearing aid, the specialist must configure the device in accordance with the features of hearing loss of the patient, taking into account the individual patient's needs (lifestyle, profession occupation, hobbies, etc.).

Courses for becoming a specialist on hearing aid are located in different States.

Texas Hearing Aid Association (THAA) is located in Houston, you can get detailed information on the licensing a specialist on hearing aid on its official site. THAA offers continuous training and development of narrow-purposed specialists. 20-hour conferences are held here annually and 15 hours of them are planned to be hold at the end of May or June. Also there are a lot of centers working in Texas that deal with problem of hearing and hearing aids. For example, HearingPlanet, where we can always find help and ask for an advice.

Association Of Hearing Instrument Practitioners works in Ontario. Courses consist of six semesters. Training is conducted in the George Brown School of Health and Wellness. Training program can vary from year to year in accordance with the new achievements of technology in this area.

In Atlanta, you can use Atlanta Hearing aid Center. Contact information including the telephone and the address of this center is listed on the website of the same name.

In Chicago, there will be no problems in finding a specialist on hearing aid in such centers as the Audio Advantage Aids, Jain Audiology, Hearing Aid Center, and others. Highly qualified professionals who can provide assistance to anybody in need work in all these centers.