Using hearing from both ears offers a lot of benefits, whether it is with two cochlear implants or one cochlear implant and a hearing aid.  Your audiologist will help you determine what may be the right solution for you.  If you do get one cochlear implant, wearing a hearing aid in the non-implanted ear is usually a strong recommendation regardless of the degree of hearing loss.  Hearing from both ears gives you a sense of fullness, or completeness of sound which reduces listening effort and enhances auditory input.  You will find it is easier to understand speech in background noise and to localize to sound sources. If the hearing loss is so profound that a hearing aid does not provide much benefit, but you can’t get a cochlear implant yet, you should still wear a hearing aid to keep that ear stimulated which will make it easier to adapt to sound if/when you do get a cochlear implant.

A cochlear implant is an amazing tool that helps people with significant hearing loss have access to sound, both for environmental information and for communication purposes. Some people have a cochlear implant in one ear and have the ability to continue to wear a hearing aid in the opposite ear. If you have hearing thresholds in the ear that does not have the implant, a hearing aid may be something that you benefit from. The hearing aid can help to balance the sound you receive from the cochlear implant that is electrical, with more natural acoustic information. Many cochlear implant recipients express that if they are able to wear both the cochlear implant and a hearing aid, that the sound quality is fuller, more balanced, and that it helps their overall ability to hear. We hear better with two ears, and we are “wired” to do that. When we stimulate both ears, either with two hearings, two cochlear implants, or a cochlear implant and a hearing aid, we access binaural processing cues that aid in our ability to understand the world of sound around us. These cues can help us understand where sound is coming from, which can help us know where safety signals are originating and where meaningful communication is happening. It can also help us to know where noise is in space, so that we can better manage those complex listening environments and use our brain to filter the meaningful binaural cues. Listening fatigue is a real issue for people with hearing loss. Being able to maximize sound in each ear can really help reduce some of that listening load and make listening more enjoyable and overall, a better experience. Hearing loss impacts our ability to interact with the world of sound around us, and this can be taxing for those that experience it. When we are able to help both ears hear their best, cochlear implant recipients can worry less about how taxing a complex listening situation is and improve their quality of life by being able to better understand and process sound around them.