[The usefulness of today's hearing aids--possibilities and limitations]

Some ten to twelve million people in Germany are estimated to need hearing aids. Many of the hard of hearing suffer from inner ear deafness with hair cell dysfunction, and not only hear sounds at too low a level of intensity, but also distorted and unintelligible. Modern special digital hearing aids are able, by appropriate amplification of certain frequencies or frequency bands or, e.g. through the use of directional microphones, to improve discrimination of speech from surrounding noise. In patients with mild hearing losses in particular, the use of bilateral hearing aids is recommended to improve speech recognition. Attention is drawn to the importance of individual counselling and the testing of the hearing aids by the patient.