Finding Out About Causes And Symptoms Of Impaired Hearing.
Understanding what leads to gradual hearing loss or the causes of impaired hearing is key to knowing how to diagnose and successfully cope with or prevent a full or partial decrease in the ability to detect or understand sounds.
Sound waves vary in peak pressure variation and in frequency – or the number of cycles per second of a sound wave. Loss of the ability to detect some frequencies, or to detect low-pressure sounds gives rise to impaired hearing.
Severe impaired hearing is categorized according to how much louder a sound must be above the usual levels before detection. In profound deafness, even the loudest sounds that can be produced, may not be detected.
Conductive hearing loss
Conductive hearing loss occurs when sound is not conducted properly through the outer ear, middle ear, or both. Impaired hearing is here, generally mild to moderate, because sound can still be detected by the inner ear. Generally, with pure conductive hearing loss, the quality of hearing (speech discrimination) is good, as long as the sound is amplified loud enough to be easily heard.
Conductive hearing loss has a variety of causes, most typically ear canal obstruction, middle or inner ear abnormalities or superior canal dehiscence syndrome
Sensorineural hearing loss
Sensorineural hearing loss is due to insensitivity of the inner ear, the cochlea, or to impairment of function in the auditory nervous system. It can produce mild, moderate, severe, or profound impaired hearing to the point of total deafness.
Other contributory factors in a medical diagnosis of impaired hearing may be long-term exposure to environmental noise, genetic, disease or illnesses such as measles, mumps, meningitis, autoimmune conditions, AIDS, syphilis or chlamydia. A gap in the bone cover above the inner ear – known as superior canal dehiscence – can lead to low-frequency conductive hearing loss, autophony and vertigo.
Onset of deafness
Post lingual deafness, usually occurs after the age of six. Signs or symptoms may develop due to disease, trauma, or as a side-effect of a medicine. Hearing loss is gradual with common treatments including hearing aids and learning to lip read.
Those suffering impaired hearing may find that the quality of their hearing varies from day to day, from one situation to another, or not at all. They may also, to a greater or lesser extent, depend on both hearing aids and lip-reading. They may perhaps not always be aware of it, but they do admit it is important to see the speaker’s face in conversation.
Many people with impaired hearing have better hearing in the lower frequency ranges (low tones), and cannot hear as well or at all in the higher frequencies.
Those who lose their hearing later in life or become hearing impaired, may have to adapt to using hearing aids or a cochlear implant, develop speech-reading skills, and/or learn sign language. The affected person may need to use hearing equipment like a TTY (teletype), interpreter, or relay service to communicate over the telephone.
Many different hearing impaired equipment, such as hearing aids and hearing impaired alarm clocks, fire alarms and telephones, are available to people with impaired hearing.