Hearing Aids

What the CPSC Data Shows

Hearing Aids (CPSC product code 1620, in the Personal Care & Safety Products category) generate an estimated 2,230 emergency-room visits every year in the United States, adding up to roughly 13,381 ER-treated injuries across the 6-year span from 2005 to 2010. PlainSafety derives a danger score of 31/100 for this category (low risk), combining raw injury volume, demographic reach, severity of outcome, and multi-year trend. The five-year trajectory shows that injury counts are stable over the most recent five-year window, with the busiest year on record being 2009 (3,538 estimated ER visits) and the quietest 2005 (951 estimated visits).

The single most common ER diagnosis for hearing aids is foreign body to the ear, accounting for approximately 9,546 visits across the 20-year NEISS window, followed by other to the ear (1,849 cases). The 75+ age group absorbs the largest share of injuries, about 4,714 cases over the NEISS window, and males appear slightly more often than the opposite sex in that cohort. Severity outcomes from the NEISS disposition field show that 2.0% of ER visits involving this product end in hospital admission or transfer.

Beyond the hospital-sampled NEISS projections, this page also aggregates 0 consumer incident reports filed directly on SaferProducts.gov, plus 20 anonymized ER narratives - together forming a layered picture of how hearing aids fail in real households. Every figure on this page comes from CPSC-published data: NEISS projects national estimates from a probability sample of about 100 U.S. hospital emergency departments, while SaferProducts.gov collects voluntary reports from consumers, manufacturers, and clinicians. The danger score, trend indicators, and demographic breakdowns update automatically when CPSC releases a new yearly NEISS file, which is why this page is dated 2010-12-31. For regulatory context, consult CPSC recall notices and the SaferProducts.gov public database linked below.