Health

Types and Causes of Hearing Impairment

People feel hearing problems because of damaged ear parts, and not hear ordinary occurs hearing impairment. All the ear parts play a specific role in hearing sounds, where earwax is an essential factor. This problem can increase if not treated soon.

If a person feels poor hearing from his childhood, he is more prone to this problem with age. Aging affects the ability to hear as loud noises are unbearable for older people.

You can have various hearing problems as it is not of a single type, so it is necessary to consult the doctor or hearing specialist as soon as possible!

Types:

Let’s have a look at different types of hearing impairment:

Conductive hearing loss:

When the problem is in the outer part or middle part of the ear that causes difficulty in passing sound waves results in a severe conductive hearing loss (CHL). The ear canal, ossicles, or eardrum interfered with this hearing problem. People with CHL hear lower voices as sounds become quieter. Many people don’t have an outer ear when born, so they have to face this situation.

Medical treatment can help, and you can get rid of it, but left untreated might become severe.

Sensorineural hearing impairment

The influential cause of Sensorineural hearing impairment is the inner ear damage part and leads to nerve ending gradually. The person with this problem has to face trouble with hearing or understanding speech and can’t interpret voices and sounds. Its significant factors can be noise, genetics, aging, infections, chemicals, etc. It is one of the most frequent types of all hearing loss types.

Hearing aids can be helpful for such people; however, it is an exception in severe cases that outer and inner hair cells stop functioning well. Cochlear implants work out for permanent hair loss problems. These devices increase the inclination to understand, hearing and recognizing speeches and sounds.

Central hearing loss:

It is challenging to treat as the cochlea performs well, but the problem is with the brain that its other portions are not performing well. The foremost cause of this type is the central auditory pathway lesion. It is sometimes related to the age factor as it can increase over time. Therefore, it is the less prevalent type of hearing loss, though the treatments are challenging but can still work out!

Causes of hearing impairment:

Many causes affect the ear as it is a sensitive part of the body. Let’s have a look at the primary conditions that lead to hearing impairment.

Ear infections:

Ear infections cause pus and fluid in the ear and limit the sound waves to transmit. Diseases that affect cochlea like Lyme disease or any viral infection cause hearing irritation and proceed longer if not treated soon.

Aging:

Aging is one of the significant factors as it degenerates the inner ear structure and affects auditory nerves badly. You can also call age-related hearing loss as Presbycusis that makes the sounds intolerable for an aged person and can affect both ears simultaneously.

Genetics:

Hearing impairment disability is a hereditary problem so runs from generation to generation. Genes make people with hearing impairment ancestors more inclined to hearing loss. Even Presbycusis is in the higher range of 35-55% due to genetic factors.

Therefore, it is better to consider hearing impairment a significant problem and treat it as soon as possible!