HEARING LOSS AND CORRECTION

HEARING
It is one of the traditional five senses. The inability to hear is called deafness. In humans and other vertebrates, hearing is performed primarily by the auditory system: vibrations are detected by the ear and transduced into nerve impulses that are perceived by the brain (primarily in the temporal lobe). Like touch, audition requires sensitivity to the movement of molecules in the world outside the organism. Both hearing and touch are types of mechanosensation.

Hearing Loss
one of its common cause is aging, called presbycusis ( literally elder hearing) other causes are trauma (sudden injury), prolonged exposure to high sound levels, disease and congenital birth defect. one of its basic types is conductive hearing loss caused by defects in the structure that conduct sound to the inner ear. another type is neural hearing loss(sometimes called sensorineural, for sensory and neural) results from damage to the cochlea or neurons that send sound information to the brain and difficult to correct.

considered severe when it interferes with a persons ability to understand conversational speech. in presbycusis, hearing is normal at low frequencies but falls of rapidly at higher frequencies. This person should not have much difficulty understanding conversational speech but is likely to have difficulty if the losses worsen. Noise- induced hearing loss often damages hearing only over a narrow range of frequencies

Hearing Test is a step in evaluating hearing loss to

determine the severity of a hearing loss and to aid in determining its type and correct ability. most common testing procedure is to place the patient in a soundproof room ad ask him or her to signal when a sound becomes audible. ear is tested individually using a headset. range of discrete frequencies is tested typically 250, 500, 1000, 2000, and 8000 Hz . if hearing loss is detected, second test is administered using bone conduction of sound.

in bone conduction test, a probe is placed against the skull behind the ear and sound vibrations of various frequencies and intensities are sent to the inner ear. bone conduction test bypass the outer and middle ear structures; if hearing is significantly better by bone conduction, then the hearing loss is conductive rather then neural. the results of this test can be graph by the use of audiogram. in audiogram, hearing threshold levels graphed in the vertical axis are he number of decibels above the normal threshold needed to be barely audible to the person tested. The open brackets are test results using bone conduction, and the circles are results using air conduction.

it is instructive to note the difficulty of making precise hearing measurements and also to comment on what constitutes a severe hearing loss before examining the hearing test results because it suffer from a number of difficulties. attenuation of sound in bone varies with frequency and differs from attenuation of air and this makes it difficult to obtain precise intensities. these difficulties are overcome by careful and consistent technique and by putting noise into the ear that is not being tested(called masking). air conduction test are more accurate because air attenuation is negligible for all frequencies and the equipment can be calibrated more easily.

TREATMENTS

one possible treatment is the use of hearing aid that sends sound to inner ear by bone rather than air conduction. another treatment may be used, depending on what part of the conduction mechanism is affected and how it is affected. surgery and other amplification through air are other possibilities

An audiogram is a standard way of representing a person's hearing loss. Most audiograms cover the limited range 100Hz to 8000Hz (8kHz) which is most important for clear understanding of speech, and they plot the threshold of hearing relative to a standardized curve that represents 'normal' hearing, in dBHL. They are not the same as equal-loudness contours, which are a set of curves representing equal loudness at different levels, as well as at the threshold of hearing, in absolute terms measured in dB SPL (sound pressure level).

Audiograms are set out with frequency in hertz (Hz) on the horizontal axis, most commonly on a logarithmic scale, and a linear dBHL scale on the vertical axis. Normal hearing is classified as being between -10dBHL and 15dBHL, although 0dB from 250Hz to 8kHz is deemed to be 'average' normal hearing.

Hearing thresholds of humans and other mammals can be found by using behavioral hearing tests or physiological tests. An audiogram can be obtained using a behavioral hearing test called Audiometry. For humans the test involves different tones being presented at a specific frequency (pitch) and intensity (loudness). When the person hears the sound they raise their hand or press a button so that the tester knows that they have heard it. The lowest intensity sound they can hear is recorded. The test varies for children, their response to the sound can be a head turn or using a toy. The child learns what they can do when they hear the sound, for example they are taught that when they heard the sound they can put a toy man in a boat. A similar technique can be used when testing some animals but instead of a toy, food can be used as a reward for responding to the sound. Physiological

tests do not need the patient to respond (Katz 2002). For example when performing the brainstem auditory evoked potentials the patients brainstem responses are being measured when a sound is played into their ear.

Hazel Anne bangiban Grethel Jane V. Banes