Hearing impairment is so often an invisible disability that it does not often enter the awareness of those whose senses are intact. A textbook knowledge of the physiology and pathology of hearing does not prepare the clinician to cope with a hearing-impaired family member, friend, or colleague, with whom we feel embarrassed, lest our raised voices attract too much attention. We are even less pr...

BACKGROUND At the present time, 50 to 60% of the population above 70 years of age suffers from a hearing impairment and from 0.6 to 1.1% has a severe to profound loss, which cannot benefit from an hearing aid. Moreover, it is expected that this prevalence will grow by more than two-fold in the next 40 years. There is strong evidence that hearing loss in older adults is associated with both cogn...

Meeting the needs of people with severe to profound hearing loss places enormous demands on a hearing instrument system. It has to make the most of narrowed residual dynamic range and the hearing instrument needs to accommodate marked individual differences in the optimal amplification strategy for compensating for severe to profound hearing loss. There also must be flexibly adjustable protecti...

OBJECTIVE To assess the prevalence of hearing impairment in siblings of children with profound to total hearing impairment. METHOD Two hundred and twenty siblings of children at a deaf school in Karachi completed the screening program. This consisted of a questionnaire and pure tone audiometry. RESULTS One out of three (73 siblings) had a threshold of 25 dB or greater in their better ear. I...

  Abstract   Background : Noise is the most common hazard in the workplace and noise induced   hearing loss considered to be the most common occupational disease as well.   Cigarette smoking, in some studies, has been known to induce hearing loss. The purpose   of this study was to evaluate the effect of contemporary exposure to occupational   noise and cigarette smoking on hearing.   Methods :...

Introduction: Hyperbilirubinemia is a common neonatal problem with toxic effects on the nervous system that can cause hearing impairment. This study was conducted to assess the risk factors for sensorineural hearing loss and other coexisting problems in icteric infants.   Materials and Methods: In a case-control study, 200 term infants with bilirubin levels higher than 20 mg/dl admitted to the...

Approximately one child per 1000 is diagnosed with severe, profound, or early onset hearing impairment, of whom approximately 50% are thought to have a genetic cause. 2 Associated clinical findings, if present and recognised neonatally, often facilitate the identification of a syndrome and the prediction that a hearing problem is likely to be part of the clinical profile. While the presence of ...

Introduction: Newborn hearing screening leads to the early detection of hearing impairment. The aim of screening is to decrease or remove the effect of hearing impairment on development of speech and language by timely diagnosis and effective treatment. A number of risk factors lead to delayed start of decreased hearing ability including: 1. Congenital infection with cytomegalovirus  (CMV) viru...