How common is hearing loss and who is affected?
Hearing loss is a very common problem. It mainly affects two different age groups, children and adults. In adults we know that up to half of the population over 50 or 60 years of age will have a hearing problem and that problem increases to 80% in people over 80 years of age. As for young children, at birth one in 1200 children may have a hearing problem in one ear and one in 5000 children the hearing problem may be severe and in both ears.
How is it diagnosed?
The diagnosis of hearing loss also differs depending on the age group we are trying to diagnose. In adults the diagnosis is somewhat simpler since the adult can answer when we are doing an audiometry.
An audiometry with normal tones or an audiometry with words or sentences. In the child, however, we need not only a person qualified in the diagnosis of childhood hearing loss, but also a much more specific set of equipment or a series of tests on which to rely. Tests that, without the patient’s collaboration, we can know if he/she is hearing or not, how much he/she is hearing in each of the two ears.
What treatment options are there and have there been any new advances?
Nowadays the treatment options are numerous and increasingly advanced. The first treatment, once we have a correct diagnosis, could be the use of hearing aids.
The latest generation digital hearing aids give a much better response or hearing improvement than what we previously obtained. It is important to choose the right hearing aid and have it programmed by the person, the audiologist or the right audiologist. Therefore, the otologist or ENT specialist should refer you to the person you trust and to the appropriate hearing aids.
When hearing aids are no longer sufficient, either because they cannot be used, or because you do not want to use them, or because the loss is too severe, we enter the field of implants, where the range of possibilities is wide and a good specialist will indicate implants that can be placed only in the bone, implants that can enter the inner ear and therefore cope with any type of hearing loss however severe or deep it may be or, finally, intermediate implants or middle ear implants that we can implant completely inside the patient or partially, depending on the characteristics of each patient and each hearing loss.