News: Lyric embedded hearing aid – amazing and freeing technology

Lyric is amazing hearing aid technology

Lyric embedded hearing aid – amazing and freeing technology

11/04/2015 - Hearing Aids, Treatment

Lyric myths dispelled

I have written several times in the past about the Lyric, the disposable hearing aid that sits deep into the ear canal just millimetres away from the ear drum for months at a time. Two years on we are now one of the top Lyric providers in the country, and I have personally fitted more Lyrics than anyone else in the country. But even though Lyric has taken off there’s still some myths about Lyric out in the community that I’d like to address.

Is Lyric Safe?

I can understand concerns about safety with a hearing aid implanted deep in the ear. But after years of trials and commercial fittings Lyric has been found to be completely safe.

The first extended wear hearing aids such as Lyric, were fitted in 2001 and then launched on a commercial basis in 2007. Between 2001 and 2007 thousands of Lyric hearing aids were fitted in clinical trials to ascertain its safety as the US FDA has one of the strictest patient safety criteria in the world. The trials found the Lyric to be a completely safe hearing device with no long-term adverse effects in wearing the device for any length of time. In fact there are thousands of Lyric wearers in the US that have been wearing Lyric now non-stop for nearly 15 years without any issues or concerns.

We live in the tropics. Won’t the humidity potentially cause infection issues?

After two years we have not had a single issue with infection caused by humidity. The material used in the Lyric is a bio-medical substance designed to prevent skin aggravation and also allow the ear canal to breathe and depressurise.

You can’t remove the Lyric yourself or adjust the volume?

You can easily remove the Lyric yourself, and should you want to adjust the volume or turn the Lyric off and on there is remote control device that can be used.

The Lyric is not a digital hearing aid so it is inferior technology?

Lyric is an analogue hearing aid, which means it picks up sounds and amplifies in real time without converting it to a digital signal. The most natural amplification you can get is analogue as, unlike with digital hearing aids, there is no delay between when the sound is detected and then reproduced. Furthermore the inner ear processes sound in the same linear fashion as analogue amplification for soft to medium loud sounds (which is where all speech sounds are) so the Lyric very accurately replicates normal hearing.

We actually tested this in our own clinics. We selected five of our patients who had the best traditional deep canal digital hearing aids available and we fitted them with Lyric to compare.

After trialling Lyric for a month all five clients reported the Lyric was the clearest and most natural hearing aid they had ever worn. Four out of the five clients continued on with Lyric, and it was only the geographical location that prevented the fifth client from subscribing.

So there you have it. Lyric is an amazing piece of technology and you can read more about it on our dedicated Lyric webpage here.

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