UNILATERAL HEARING LOSS

UNILATERAL HEARING LOSS

Unilateral hearing loss is a type of hearing impairment where there is normal hearing in one ear and impaired hearing in the other ear.

Patients with unilateral hearing loss have difficulty:
· hearing conversation on their impaired side
· localizing sound
· understanding speech in the presence of background noise.
In quiet conditions, speech discrimination is approximately the same for normal hearing and those with unilateral deafness; however, in noisy environments speech discrimination varies individually and ranges from mild to severe.

Causes include physical trauma, acoustic neuroma, microtia, meningitis, or mumps.

It is known to cause:
· Irritability
· Frequent headaches, stress, fatigue
· Social isolation
· Trouble figuring out where sounds are coming from (localizing)
· Variable light dizziness
· Attention difficulties
· Inability to filter out background noise or selectively listen to only the
important portion of the noise in the environment.
· Educational difficulties, academic delays, and speech and language delays
for school aged children

Treatment Options (dependent on the degree of hearing loss)

Hearing aid

The hearing aid amplifies sound to a near normal level in the hearing loss ear. The hearing aid typically can be of any style (aka. BTE, CIC) but essentially depends on the degree of hearing loss present and the size of the ear.

FM system

System whereby a person wears a microphone (a transmitter) and the hearing impaired person wears a receiver ( either headphones or a hearing aid with a FM receiver) that receives the speech signal directly from the person with the microphone at a comfortable level even at a distance and in the presence of noise. Useful for school aged children in the classroom environment to help hear the teacher better when the teacher is often further away from the child and there is often a lot of background noise present.

CROS hearing aid

A hearing aid that takes sound from the ear with poorer hearing and transmits to the ear with better hearing. This kind of hearing aid can involve two behind-the-ear units connected either by wire or by wireless transmission.

Bone Anchored Hearing Aid

Transfers sound through bone conduction and stimulates the cochlea of the normal hearing ear.

blogger/author: Sarah Helmel