It is the summertime and a lot of people travel to warm places for vacation. What if your hearing aids are so comfortable that you didn't notice you were wearing them when you jumped in the swimming pool with them? Or what if you accidentally take a shower with your hearing aids?
This article brief is a 2-minute guide on what you can do to save your hearing aids if they get wet accidentally.
How would hearing aids sound when exposed to water?
The hearing aids could go completely silent, or start working intermittently, meaning for a minute they sound normal, and after a few minutes they go silent.
This is often because the inlet of the microphones is fully or partially blocked by water (assuming the little speaker is still in your ear. If you dive in a swimming pool with your hearing aids there is a good chance that your hearing aids come off and then both the inlet of the microphones and the little speaker will be flooded with water.
If you bought a pair of premium hearing aids after 2020, there is a good chance that your hearing aids are rated IP68, meaning they are water resistant. Even if your hearing aids are of the older generation the following instructions are the same.
What should I do if my hearing aids get wet?
All you need to do is remove the battery (if battery-powered), keep the battery door open, remove the silicon dome which is on the little speaker (the part that goes in your ear), and clean the water carefully from the hearing aid with a piece of Kleenex. Now leave the hearing aid in a dry place with some good air flow for about a day. The remaining water and moisture will evaporate in about 24 hours.
After a day, look at the hearing aid and see if there is any sign of water or moisture. Put a new battery and turn it on. If rechargeable, now put them on the charger for one hour to charge. Try them on and they should work.
Placing the hearing aids in the dehumidifier unit is also very helpful. There is a wide range of hearing aid dehumidifiers on Amazon.co.uk from a simple container with moisture-absorbant pills to the more sophisticated ones.
Instead of leaving them for a day to dry, you can also leave them in a small sack of dry rice. Rice grains are very good moisture absorbers.
What if there is water or moisture in the tube of my BTE hearing aids?
If your hearing aids are fitted with earmould and tubes there is a good chance that water or moisture are still in there. You need to disconnect the tube from the tip of the BTE. You can blow air gently to push the water out of the tube, then dry it with Kleenex. The rest is as discussed above i.e. a day in a sac of dry rice, a new battery and there you go.
I did all the above but my hearing aids are not working, what can I do?
If the water gets inside the case of the hearing aids (which are usually sealed based on the IP level of your hearing aids) it may cause some damage to the electronics inside the hearing aids. Please see this page for our hearing aid repair and maintenance services. You can mail us your broken hearing aids and we will do the repair and service and mail it back to you.
Additional information:
Please see this article for more details: https://www.hearingnow.co.uk/learning/what-to-do-if-my-hearing-aids-get-wet
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