This is a true record of the pathway of one of my patients who chose Resound Nexia 9. I thought going through a real story of a patient with hearing loss might be interesting for you. The full name of the patient has been removed for privacy reasons.
Figure 1 - Resound Nexia microRITE
How may I help you?
Me: "Good afternoon Roger, welcome to our clinic, my name is Nejad, what can I do for you, sir?"
Roger: "Well, it has been a few years that my wife and my daughter are worried about my hearing. I received a free pair of NHS hearing aids about 5 years ago, but I couldn't get along with them, to be honest. They were bulky and not very comfortable and worse, made everything very loud, so I barely use them."
Me: "OK, I see. How is your hearing, please can you describe the situations in which you feel your hearing is not up to your expectations?"
Roger: "I can hear the doorbell, but the TV sound needs to be higher for me to be able to hear the dialogue of the program. Also, I keep missing my wife calling me from the kitchen, and I keep asking my daughter to repeat herself.
Me: "Do you have any pain, discharge, tinnitus or infection in the ear? Done any ear operations in the past? Any balance issues?"
Roger: "No, I don't have any discharge or pain and have never done any operation in the ear. But I hear a high pitch on both sides that is not bothersome. It started about 15 years ago, I am 90 now. It doesn't bother me."
Me: "ok thank you. I'll do a physical examination of your ears and then we will do a pure tone audiometry".
Roger's otoscopy showed a healthy eardrum and ear canal on both sides.
Me: "This is your audiogram, Roger. Your hearing loss is a classic sloping sensorineural profile, mostly mild to moderate in low to mid frequencies and gets to the severe to profound region at high frequencies. There is no sign of any pathology that may require a forward referral to your GP or an ENT. This is just normal deterioration of your auditory system at your age. The shaded area on the audiogram is what we call speech-banana. It maps all the consonants that build our words and phrases. As you can see, at the moment you can only hear the vowels and other consonants in the first group that is at the low-frequency band and they fall below your lines of threshold. The other two are mid and high-frequency and you're not able to hear them naturally. That's why you may feel the sound of ladies and children feels more muffled compared to men's voices. And very likely following conversation in noisy places is very difficult, right?"
Roger: "Yes, that's right."
Figure 2 - Roger's audiogram
Then, we discussed the auditory pathway and why it is important to wear hearing aids to avoid a steep decline in his cognitive power, especially at a late age. Roger seems to be ready to consider using hearing aids very seriously at this second attempt in his life.
Me: "As an independent audiologist we offer several different hearing aids in the UK market so you can try and feel how they sound. Do you have any preferred model for the hearing aids in mind, Roger?"
Roger: "Actually my Wife (she was present in this appointment) uses Resound Linx and she is very happy with them after you did an adjustment and service on them. I guess I just try Resound's latest technology, if possible."
I fitted a pair of Resound Nexia 9 for Roger, did REM and did some fine-tuning.
Me: "How do they feel Roger, do they sound fine?"
Roger: "They are comfortable in my ear, but they sound very loud".
Me: "Certainly, that is quite normal as your brain has not been receiving the volume it needs for a long time. I'll reduce the volume to a comfortable level but we will keep adjusting this and other aspects of the sound in the follow-up appointments."
Roger: "Oh ok, now it sounds very nice."
Roger ordered a Resound TV streamer so he and his wife could stop reading through the TV subtitles while watching TV. A very wise decision to keep sending stimulus signals to the auditory cortex instead of getting their eyes running through TV subtitles.
About a month later, we had a follow-up appointment. A week after that appointment Roger called me, "I can hear a lot of sounds that I almost completely forgot about, the sound of the birds chirping, the crackling sound of walking on the gravel in the park and the sound of my granddaughter. I love my Resound Nexia", he said.
Roger is one of the many patients who chose Resound Nexia for the sound quality and robustness of Resound products. If you want to learn more about Resound Nexia, please continue reading this article.
Why Resound Nexia hearing aids?
Here is a summary of Resound Nexia 9 features:
Sound quality - 9 out of 10 users recommend Resound Nexia for its quality of sound and its ability to help hear speech in the presence of background noise (more on Resound website).
Comfort and design - As Roger spelt it, the size and design of the hearing aid matter (more on the smallest hearing aids of 2024 here). Resound Nexia is one of the smallest hearing aids on the market. In my experience, first-time hearing aid users feel comfortable having it behind their ears. In particular ladies and patients with delicate and small ears would appreciate the small and minimalistic design of Resound Nexia.
Flexible - Resound Nexia comes in all shapes and forms, including microRIE which is the smallest design, MiniRIE with 312 and 13 batteries, with the telecoil version, and in custom-made in-the-ear (ITE) design.
Connectivity - Like all the other premium hearing aids (except Phonak) Resound Nexia is designed for the Apple operating system (MFI for made-for-iphone). It seamlessly connects to your iPhone, but it can also connect to your Android mobile phone. You can have a hands-free call through Resound Nexia by simply double-tapping on any of your Resound Nexia hearing aids.
Future-ready - Resound Nexia is ready to connect to low-energy Bluetooth (LE Bluetooth) if your cell phone or your computer handles the protocol. The LE Bluetooth improved the streaming sound quality while taking much less battery from the hearing aids allowing the user a longer run time. Also, Resound Nexia is ready for Auacast which is the one-to-many cutting-edge communication protocol that allows the soundtrack received and heard in your Resound Nexia when broadcasted via Auracast in Cinemas, concerts, theatres or any other public places.
Practicality - Resound Nexia offers 30 hours of run time on only 3 hours of charging time. Resound Nexia's portable power pack charger allows a 3-time full charge which provides ease of mind on the road, in travels, and in city commutes.
Available in CROS and BiCROS - Resound Nexia is available for fittings on rechargeable and battery-powered CROS or BiCROS.
Fitting range - Resound Nexia can be fitted for patients with mild, moderate, severe and severely profound hearing loss.
Figure 3 - Resound Nexia fitting range
How is Bluetooth streaming on Resound Nexia?
In an in-house test, we identified that Resound One, Omnia and Nexia hearing aids have the best Bluetooth streaming (in terms of connection reliability and range) just beyond Phonak (see the full report here). I have to admit that Bluetooth streaming is becoming one of the main features of hearing aids. When I ask my patients about the top 3 features they want to see in their hearing aids they usually come up with hearing speech in a noisy environment followed by a descent Bluetooth connectivity. If you do a lot of Zoom meetings or listen to a lot of music or podcasts then you will be impressed by Resound Nexia Bluetooth streaming quality and stability.
What is unique about Resound Nexia?
Besides outstanding speech understanding in noisy environments and very stable Bluetooth streaming, Resound Nexia is the only hearing aid in the world that can be set a dual function. Resound's M&RIE unique receivers have a microphone on the speaker itself. This feature is suitable for fitting Nexia for people with mild to moderate hearing loss. The result is a much better speech understanding in noisy situations. The following video elaborates on how M&RIE receivers work.
Video 1 - M&RIE receivers
Can Resound Nexia stream directly to my smart TV?
Most smart TVs in the market do not support the Bluetooth protocol for hearing aids. If you have a smart TV you can try to see if you can connect your hearing aids to your TV through Bluetooth. Nevertheless, the best alternative is to use a Resound TV streamer to connect your Nexia hearing aids to your TV. Please note that Resound Nexia can connect to Resound TV Streamer 2 and Resound TV Streamer Plus, but only Resound Nexia can connect to Resound TV Streamer Plus. Please read more about Resound wireless and TV streaming devices on the Resound website. Resound TV Streamer Plus works based on LE Bluetooth (Low Energy Bluetooth) and broadcasts a better sound quality to Resound Nexia than legacy Resound TV Streamer 2.
Figure 4 - Resound TV Streamer Plus
What Technology level of Resound Nexia is the best?
Resound Nexia come in 3 different technology levels, Resound Nexia 9, 7 and 5 (see Table 1). My advice is nothing different from what you might have heard from other audiologists, if you have a flexible budget go for the higher technology Resound Nexia 9 technology level as it offers the best noise reduction and the best front focusing for speech understanding.
Table 1 - Resound Nexia technology levels and features
Who offers the best price for Resound Nexia hearing aids?
Follow the following links for the best prices for Resound Nexia microRIE in the UK.
References
Groth, J. and McCoy, D., What Do Owners of Hearing Aids that Stream Think of the Sound Quality?. Canadian Audiologist, 10(2).
Bott, A., Piechowiak, T., Groth, J. and Jespersen, C.T., 2022. What Big Data Has to Say About Individual Differences in Hearing Aid Use: Insights From GN Online Services (Gnos). Therapy.
Jespersen, C.T., Kirkwood, B. and Groth, J., Better TV listening with TV-Streamer.
