SINGLE SIDED HEARING
Hearing loss in one ear is known as Single sided hearing.
If you’ve been diagnosed with single-sided hearing, let us reassure you of two things: it’s entirely normal to feel overwhelmed; and help is at hand. Thanks to modern technology – and despite what you might have heard or read about hearing aids – effective solutions for singlesided hearing do exist. You do not have to live life only ever catching part of the conversation, nor do you necessarily have to have a hearing aid surgically fitted.
Single-sided hearing loss poses unique challenges
When hearing is far worse in one ear than the other correcting the overall hearing loss becomes more complicated. Single-sided hearing loss can make it especially hard to understand speech in loud environments or figure out from which direction a sound is coming. You likely have to remind people to speak toward your “good” side or have to keep turning your head during conversations in ways that can be uncomfortable or inconvenient.
Hearing care professionals frequently advocate for binaural (two ear) solutions, like wearing hearing aids in pairs, in order to better mimic natural hearing ― utilizing input from both ears to create a complete sound impression in your brain. But what happens when this is impossible because one ear is unaidable?
The answer is a CROS/BiCROS solution.
The differences between CROS and BiCROS
Some people only have severe, profound, or complete hearing loss in one ear while the other has normal or near-normal hearing. In this instance, there is no need for a hearing aid in the natural hearing ear to amplify or clarify sounds coming from that side of your head. However, wearing a CROS/BiCROS system remains a viable solution, as it enables you to hear binaurally again, and thus improves your ability to localize sound, talk on the phone, and understand speech no matter which direction it comes from. The following clarifies how CROS and BiCROS work:
BiCROS: So, whether your hearing loss solely affects one ear or is present in both ears (but worse on one side than the other), an effective binaural solution is still possible. Talk to our hearing care professional about a CROS/BiCROS system and test it out for yourself!
A hearing aid worn in the ear with aidable hearing loss receives the sound from the CROS transmitter worn in your unaidable ear, mixes it with its own sound input, and amplifies the mixed signal for hearing through your “better” ear.