Hearing Centers Help with the Stages of Loss

Hearing loss is often seen as just another aspect of the aging process, but in all of its stages it is a scary and serious process. If you've ever experienced any aspect of hearing then you can definitely appreciate the defeat associated with losing one of your precious senses. It can occur in one ear or both ears for various patients. It can result from a congenital disorder, external injury, or gradual loss over time as the result of damaging use or various other causes. There are at least six known auditory issues that hearing centers help their patients to understand and resolve with support devices. A hearing center helps individuals who possess the inner ear components to hear but have experienced some degree of loss for one reason or another.

From the least amount of auditory loss to the most advanced is the following: high frequency, unilateral, mild, moderate, severe and profound. The names of the levels of loss explain only their classification on a scale but their symptoms are all very different. First, high frequency hearing loss impacts one's ability to perceive loud or sound very high in pitch. However, with high frequency loss, the other aspects of one's hearing are fully functional, that is, all other sounds are understood. Unilateral loss is when only one ear is affected by any aspect of the spectrum of loss. Because the brain processes information from the ears together, individuals with this condition cannot tell from which direction a sound is originating, they have difficulty perceiving low volumes or distinguishing sounds in a busy space. Due to the difficulty perceive high and low sounds, high frequency and unilateral loss seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. In comparison to the more severe stages, they are at the lower end the spectrum.

A hearing center can not only determine the mild auditory loss but those conditions that impact hearing all the way up to profound loss that prevents sound perception at all. First, mild loss affects 20 to 40 percent of conversation especially with low voices, volumes, and competing environmental noises. Second, moderate loss causes 50 to 75 percent reduction in conversation perception where the patient often mishears words and requires conversations from shorter distances. Third, severe loss requires close conversations, with no competing noises, and a little lip reading in order to understand what is being said. Lastly, profound hearing loss requires each patient to use lip reading and sign language in order to understand what is being said. And depending upon how long they've been dealing with this level of loss, they may have to be understood that way as well.

The relief for all of these patients is that a hearing center provides testing for diagnoses and research for treatment including hearing aids that can help a variety of patients with regaining as much of their hearing as possible.