Hearing loss creates a lot of problems in a person’s personal & professional life, & causes issues with their emotional well-being.
The causes of hearing loss can be diverse and not particularly related to any specific reason.
Certain diseases, illnesses, infections, medications, & accidents can lead to hearing loss, as can certain structural & genetic disorders.
Whatever the cause of hearing loss, hearing aids can help treat your hearing loss.
They can very easily help you hear properly & interact with other people more meaningfully.
However, it’s important to choose the right hearing aids for this purpose.
How do hearing aids work?
A hearing aid is basically a battery-powered electronic device that helps you hear external sounds more accurately.
They are quite tiny so they can easily be worn around or behind your ears, & they help make external sounds louder to help you easily hear those.
With the help of hearing aids, you can amplify external sounds which helps you communicate with the other people around you in a better way.
There are three components of a hearing aid. These are:
A microphone, that picks up external sounds
An amplifier that makes those sounds louder
A receiver that sends these amplified sounds into your ear.
However, hearing aids don’t benefit everyone who wears them. Hearing Aids often benefit those people who have damages to their inner ear and/or the nerve that links the ear with the brain.
The damage can be due to:
Disease
Aging
Loud noises
Medications
Hearing loss that occurs due to issues with the eardrum, ear canal, or middle ear, is called conductive hearing loss.
In most cases, surgery or any other medical intervention might help relieve the hearing loss of patients.
But these options are often not for everyone.
Typical Hearing Aids only work for you if you have an open ear canal & a relatively normal exterior ear canal.
Instead, a device that sends sounds to the inner ear through their skull bone, might be the best option for them.
How you can get a hearing aid?
An Ears-Nose-Throat(ENT) doctor can help you with the proper hearing aids for yourself.
These specialists can easily evaluate & help treat your hearing loss.
The ENT specialist will conduct exams to help you find out the best hearing aids for your case.
In addition to that, an audiologist will perform certain tests on you to figure out the exact type of hearing loss you’re suffering from.
You should always get hearing aids from a specialist, only after performing all the tests and due diligence.
Avoid mail-ordering hearing aids as they often don’t fit correctly, & don’t improve your hearing issues much.
Most people don’t experience hearing loss in both ears, however, some people do.
For people with hearing loss in both ears, it’s probably best to wear two hearing aids.
Types & Styles of hearing loss:
An audiologist can help you find the right kind of hearing aids for yourself. They will figure out the best kind of hearing aids for you depending on your exact degree of hearing loss, & also modify it according to any special needs you might have.
The factors that determine what kind of hearing aids is best for you:
The type of hearing loss you suffer from & its severity
Your age
Your experience & efficiency with small devices
Your lifestyle
The cost. Hearing aids costs can vary greatly in price, often ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars
Hearing Aids are primarily of two types. These include:
Analog hearing aids: These convert sound waves to electrical signals that help make the sounds louder. They’re generally less expensive than the other kind of hearing aids. They are also easier to handle as they have easier volume controls.
Digital hearing aids: These hearing aids convert sound waves into numerical codes much like computer codes, which then amplifies them.
The codes include information about the direction of a sound, its pitch, & its volume.
This helps the patient easily control & modulate the sound volume, frequency, & intensity according to their physical conditions & surroundings, i.e., whether they are in a quiet room, setting, or someplace noisy & loud. Most digital hearing aids are able to adjust such tiny details & nuances automatically, without any manual adjustments.
The automatic kind, however, costs significantly more than the manual digital hearing aids, but have shown better results & are also smaller in size, thus easier to handle. They are also more powerful than manual digital hearing aids.
Style of hearing aids:
There are three main styles of hearing aids. They differ in their size, placement in or over the ear, along with how much they help the patient hear external sounds.
These styles include:
Canal hearing aids: Canal hearing aids fit inside your ears which makes them harder to see. An In-the-canal(ITC) hearing aids are made to fit a specific canal of your ear. A completely-in-canal(CIC) hearing aid is smaller & nearly disappears inside the ear canal. Both types are used to treat moderate to severe hearing loss, however, since they are both extremely small, they can be difficult to adjust & remove.
Owing to this reason, these usually aren’t used for small children & older people who might have difficulty adjusting to them.
These devices are quite difficult to see, hence you might want to wear them every day, or even use them for several months at a stretch.
In-The-Ear(ITE) hearing aids: ITE hearing aids fit completely inside your ear. They come in a hard plastic case that holds the electronics parts.
They are used for people with mild to severe hearing loss, although they are not suitable for children whose ears are still growing in size.
Behind-The-Ear(BTE) hearing aids: BTE hearing aids sit encased in a hard plastic case behind your ears. A plastic ear molds fits inside the outer ear & directs sounds to the ear.
A different type, which is called Mini BTE, fits entirely behind your ear with a narrow tube that goes into your ear canal.
This tube helps prevent earwax from building up inside the ear, as well as helps make your own voice sound clearer.
BTEs can help treat mild to severe hearing loss, however, they aren’t for everyone.Receiver-In-Canal(RIC) & Receiver-In-the-ear(RIE) hearing aids: Both of these hearing aids have a behind-the-ear component that connects to the receiver in the ear or the ear canal with a tiny wire. This helps low-frequency sounds to enter the ear in a natural way & also helps the high-frequency sounds to be amplified through the hearing aid. RIC & RIE hearing aids help patients with mild to severe hearing loss.
You can also modify any of these devices according to your specific needs & requirements. Your doctor will help you define those needs & requirements, based on which they will specify the exact hearing aid for you. Book an Appointment: https://vertigoandearclinic.com/contact-us.php
Sudden hearing loss need not always be sudden, however, & can also occur gradually, until the hearing is completely lost in one or both the ears.
Sudden hearing loss should be considered a medical emergency, needing immediate attention of experts & specialists.
Most times, people who develop sudden hearing loss hesitate to go to the doctor as they believe it will clear up on its own time. However, this is a dangerous assumption to make & the more you delay your visit to the doctor, the less the treatments of sudden hearing loss will be effective.
Most people who develop sudden hearing loss, do so in only one ear. Rarely enough, however, sudden hearing loss in both the ears is also seen.
Diagnosis of Sudden Hearing Loss
Sudden hearing loss is diagnosed using a standard hearing test called Pure Tone Audiometry. This test determines if the hearing loss is caused by an obstruction in the path of sound waves like inner ear fluid, ear wax, tumours, etc., or if it is caused by neurological issues. This test can also determine the amount of hearing loss in decibels.
If the test logs a loss of at least 30 decibels in three connected frequencies, then the patient is diagnosed as suffering from Sudden Hearing Loss.
To make it clear for the layman reader to understand, a loss of 30 decibels in hearing frequency will make conversations on a regular pitch sound more like a whisper.
Most people with sudden hearing loss notice the loss of hearing when they wake up in the morning one day.
Some others, however, discover their hearing loss when they try to use the deafened ear while talking on phones or any other thing.
Some people with sudden hearing loss also report hearing a loud ‘pop’ like sound just before they notice their hearing loss.
Often, people who report to hospitals with sudden hearing loss also complain of feeling dizzy & a loud ringing noise in their ears also called tinnitus.
This happens as a result of the neurological disturbances in the balance centre that is located in the inner ear. When a person experiences sudden hearing loss, their balance centre also gets disoriented, thus leading to sensations of spinning, a loss of balance, & feelings of dizziness.
Causes of Sudden Hearing Loss
In most cases of Sudden hearing loss, close to approximately 85%, there is no proper identifiable cause. Only about 10-15% of patients with sudden hearing loss have a known cause.
These known causes of sudden hearing loss include:
Certain infectious diseases that affect the inner ear
Trauma from a head injury
Autoimmune diseases like Cogan’s syndrome
Taking an overdose of ototoxic drugs, which are drugs that harm the sensory nerves in the inner ear
Blood circulation issues
A tumour on the nerve connecting the ear to the brain
Certain neurological disorders like Multiple Sclerosis, and
Inner ear diseases like Meniere’s Disease
Treatment of Sudden Hearing Loss
The most common treatment of sudden hearing loss, especially in cases where the cause of the hearing loss is unexplainable, is corticosteroids.
Steroids are commonly used by medical practitioners to treat various types of disease & disorders.
Steroids help by reducing inflammation in the body, decreasing swelling, & aiding the body’s immune system to fight back in most cases of viral infections.
While steroids are usually prescribed in the form of a pill, direct injection based steroids therapy called intratympanic corticosteroid therapy, has also become popular in recent years.
In this, the corticosteroids are injected in liquid format behind the eardrum into the middle ear, where they travel into the inner ear & reduce any inflammation.
Intratympanic corticosteroid therapy may also be beneficial for patients who are otherwise unable to take oral steroids.
Depending on your exact diagnosis, your doctor will prescribe an adequate treatment plan that can help restore the sudden hearing loss.
Trusting the right specialists & experts with your condition is the first step to take in order to help restore your sudden hearing loss. At Vertigo and Ear Clinic, we have a dedicated team of Vertigo & ear specialists that accurately diagnose, treat, & manage your conditions.
We utilize a slew of innovative technology, experience, & expertise to help make each of our patients’ lives better.
Learn more about the treatment of sudden hearing loss here.
Learn more about us here.
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Preventing hearing loss is not an easy task if you have an underlying condition that can cause you to lose your hearing. However, there are several things you can do to reduce the risk of hearing loss from long-term exposure to loud noise. This includes not having music or the television on at a loud volume at home and using ear-protection at loud music events or in noisy work environments. Certain conditions, including age, illness, and genetics, may contribute to hearing loss. Over several generations, modern life has added a host of ear-damaging elements to the list, including some medications and plenty of sources of loud, continuous noise is the most common cause of hearing loss.
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