A bounded operator defined on a Banach space is said to be polaroid if every isolated point of the spectrum is a pole of the resolvent. In this paper we consider the two related notions of left and right polaroid, and explore them together with the condition of being a-polaroid. Moreover, the equivalences of Weyl type theorems and generalized Weyl type theorems are investigated for left and a-polaroid operators. As a consequence, we obtain a general framework which allows us to derive in a unified way many recent results, concerning Weyl type theorems (generalized or not) for important classes of operators.Mathematics Subject Classification (2010). Primary 47A10, 47A11. Secondary 47A53, 47A55.