Hearing Loss Treatment in Tallahassee
Sensorineural hearing loss
Your ear is made up of three parts— the outer, the middle, and the inner ear. Within the inner ear lies the cochlea, which is your organ of hearing, and it houses tiny nerve endings called stereocilia. Sensorineural hearing loss, or SNHL, happens after damage occurs to these stereocilia or to the nerve pathways from your cochlea to your brain.
This is the most common type of hearing loss and is typically permanent. Most of the time, medicine or surgery cannot fix SNHL. Hearing aids may help you hear.
Common Symptoms of Sensorineural Hearing Loss:
- Difficulty hearing voices in places with background noise, for example at parties, restaurants, or family gatherings.
- Difficulty hearing or understanding female or children’s voices.
- Difficulty understanding speech on the TV or phone and needing to turn up the volume.
- Problems hearing soft or high-pitched sounds such as the clock ticking, the refrigerator humming, or the birds singing.
- While soft sounds may be hard to hear, louder sounds may be unclear, muffled, or even uncomfortable.
- Many people also report tinnitus (ringing, buzzing, humming noises).
Causes of Sensorineural Hearing Loss
This type of hearing loss can be caused by the following:
- Age-related hearing loss (presbycusis).
- Listening to loud noises or explosions.
- Illnesses.
- Drugs that are toxic to hearing.
- Hearing loss that runs in the family.
- A blow to the head.
- A problem in the way the inner ear is formed.
Conductive hearing loss
Your ear is made up of three parts— the outer, the middle, and the inner ear. A conductive hearing loss happens when sounds cannot get through the outer and middle ear. It may be hard to hear soft sounds and louder sounds may be muffled.
Medicine or surgery can often (but not always) fix this type of hearing loss.
Common Symptoms of Conductive Hearing Loss:
- Muffled hearing.
- Sudden or steady loss of hearing.
- Full or “stuffy” sensation in the ear.
- Draining of the ear.
- Pain or tenderness in the ear.
- Dizziness associated with head, sinus, and ear pressure.
- Tinnitus, or ringing in the ears.
- Causes of Conductive Hearing Loss.
This type of hearing loss can be caused by the following:
- Ear infections (otitis media).
- Eustachian tube dysfunction. The Eustachian tube helps drain fluid and equalize pressure in your middle ear space. Fluid can stay in the middle ear if the tube does not work correctly.
- A hole in your eardrum.
- Earwax built up in your ear canal.
- Infection in the ear canal, called otitis externa. You may hear this called swimmer’s ear.
- A foreign object stuck in your ear canal.
- A problem with how the outer or middle ear is formed. Some people are born without an outer ear. Some may have a deformed ear canal or have a problem with the bones in their middle ear called otosclerosis.
Mixed hearing loss
Your ear is made up of three parts— the outer, the middle, and the inner ear. Within the inner ear lies the cochlea, which is your organ of hearing. Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) happens after damage occurs to the auditory nerve endings or pathways from your cochlea to your brain. A conductive hearing loss (CHL) happens when sounds cannot get through the outer and middle ear.
Sometimes CHL happens at the same time as SNHL. This means that there may be an obstruction in the outer or middle ear, and also damage in the inner ear or nerve pathway to the brain. This is a mixed hearing loss.
Causes of Mixed Hearing Loss:
Anything that causes a CHL or SNHL can lead to a mixed hearing loss. An example would be if you have a hearing loss because you work around loud noises, and you also have fluid in your middle ear. The two together might make your hearing worse than it would be with only one problem.
Treatment for Mixed Hearing Loss:
- Most of the time, medicine or surgery cannot fix SNHL, but hearing aids may help you hear.
- There are a variety of treatments for CHL depending on the cause of the loss. These treatments may include medication or surgery.