What is Hearing Loss?

Hearing Loss… The Silent Disease?

Different Types of Hearing Loss

Middle Ear Hearing Loss (conductive hearing)

Chronic middle ear infections, Otoslerosis (calcification), tumours, etc., cause dysfunction of the malleus, incus and stapes (three little bones in the ear).
Most of these conditions can be cured with surgery, depending the age of the patient.

Inner Ear Hearing Loss (Nerve Deafness)

THIS CONDITION IS IRREVERSIBLE AND DAMAGE TO THE AUDITORY NERVEs NEVER RECOVER AGAIN. To find out more on the various causes, read about it in our blog article – Various Nerve Deafness Causes.

Presbaycusis Hearing Loss

Hearing loss caused due to ageing.

NIHL (Noise Included Hearing Loss)

Probably one of the most unfair causes of hearing loss or impairment.

Exposure is usually in industrial environments and mining areas where the workplace is polluted with noise more than 85 decibels.  Exposure over a period of time, without the proper hearing protection is very likely to cause hearing loss or impairment.

Hearing protectors must be worn at all times to prevent NIHL.

Often NIHL can be associated with Tinnitus (buzzing of the ears).

By far, the majority of hearing losses are in the high frequencies, causing speech discrimination problems, and inability to communicate in noisy areas and in amongst a crowd of people in restaurants, etc.

The high frequency sounds in speech are the S, K, T, and V and when in a noisy environment, these sounds will disappear and non-existing words are heard.

People with a hearing loss tend to start avoiding gatherings of people, meetings (if possible), or any area where background noise is present, making communication almost impossible.