Cleaning and Caring for Your Hearing Aids
Do-it-yourself upkeep is an essential part of owning and maintaining hearing aids. With proper care, your hearing aids will work better for longer.
Regular hearing aid cleaning, proper storage and some essential maintenance will reduce the times you need to visit your hearing care provider for servicing and repairs, saving you time and money.
Caring for your hearing aids can seem daunting at first. After a bit of practice, knowing how to clean your hearing aids will feel natural.
If you need guidance on storing, cleaning and maintaining your hearing aids, this guide will walk you through what you need to know.
8 Tips To Keep Your Hearing Aids Out of Harms Way
Hearing aids are reasonably robust, but there are some things you can do to ensure they remain in working order longer. Most importantly, keep them as dry as possible, don’t force them open and be gentle when handling them.
- Gently clean your hearing aids with soft, dry tissue every other day.
- Don’t place your hearing aids in wet areas like the bathroom or kitchen.
- Avoid using excess hairspray and other sticky or gooey hair products while wearing your hearing aids. Gels, creams, liquids and aerosols can build up inside your hearing aids and cause problems.
- Keep pets and children away from your hearing aids. Small hearing aids are a choking hazard; some animals might like to chew on them.
- Disposable batteries can run out in a few days, especially if you have a hearing aid with many features. Carry spare batteries and replace them as soon as they go dead.
- Please turn off your hearing aids when you’re not using them. Open up the battery compartment to allow the hearing aids to air out.
- Store your hearing aids in a safe place, like the top drawer of a dressing table or a locked cupboard, when not in use. A dehumidifier or drying case is a good idea if you live in a humid environment.
- Keep your hearing aids out of direct sunlight for long periods and avoid leaving them in a hot car in the summertime. Excess heat can damage sensitive components.
Keeping Your Ears Clean
Keeping your ears clean is essential to caring for your hearing aids.
While in and on your ears, hearing aids come into contact with earwax and skin debris. Therefore, if you keep your ears clean, it’s easier to keep your hearing aids clean.
Hearing aids stimulate earwax production and make it more difficult for earwax and debris to escape your ears.
Clean the entrance to your ears regularly with a warm moist cloth. This will help to clear earwax and skin debris that has worked its way to the surface of your ear.
Some people may experience blocked ears from earwax and debris or more troublesome earwax impaction. If that’s the case, having your ears cleaned professionally is best.
Don’t try to clean inside your ears with earbuds, q-tips, or bobby pins. You could easily push earwax or debris further into your ear or even perforate your eardrum.
Cleaning Signia Hearing Aids
This selection of videos by Signia demonstrates how to clean a range of hearing aids, including:
- Behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aid.
- Custom or in-the-ear (ITE) hearing aid.
- Receiver-in-canal (RIC) hearing aid.
Signia has more videos on its YouTube Channel, such as handling specific hearing aid models.
WIDEX Hearing Aid Cleaning and Maintenance
These videos by WIDEX show you how to:
- Change the battery or wax guard and clean your WIDEX hearing aids.
- How to clean an in-the-ear (ITE) hearing aid.
- How to dry hearing aids.
More videos are available on the WIDEX YouTube channel.
Playlist
Cleaning and Care of Phonak Hearing Aids
Step-by-step instructions on how to learn and care for various Phonak hearing aids, including:
- receiver in the Canal (RIC) hearing aids
- custom (ITE) hearing aids
- hearing aids with an earmould
- hearing aids with a slim tube.
More Phonak videos are available on their YouTube Channel.
Playlist
Cleaning ReSound Hearing Aids
A selection of instructional videos from Resound on how to:
- clean a receiver-in-canal (RIC) hearing aid
- clean a behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aid
- clean a custom in-the-ear (ITE) hearing aid.
More hearing aid cleaning, care and handling videos from ReSound can be found on their YouTube Channel.
