Which is the best ear to put an hearing aid , the good ear or bad?!
Question:
Which is the best ear to put an hearing aid , the good ear or bad?
Answers:
Jane -- spoken like someone who doesn't have a hearing impairment and doesn't work with someone with hearing impairments.
Presumably you are referring to the fact that you have a bilateral hearing loss, and one ear is worse than the other. The answer to your question depends on how bad the hearing loss is in your bad ear, how great the differential is between the two ears, and how good is your hearing aid.
If your bad ear is in the severe to profound range of hearing loss, then an aid in that side may not add a lot of value with respect to speech recognition, especially if the aid is analog rather than digital. If you've gone unaided so long that you really only listen out of the good side, an aid on the bad side might not help either.
However, if your loss is moderate to severe, then a good digital aid on the bad side really could add to your ability to understand speech. Where an aid on the bad side will help probably regardless of your level of hearing loss is with sound localization, i.e. being able to tell where sound is coming from. All you can really do is guess, then try it out and if you don't like it, have it reprogrammed and try the other side.