Medical Aspects of Hearing Loss

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Heart Disease and Hearing Loss Share Risk Factors

February 2009

At first glance, the heart and the cochlea seem to have little in common. One supplies a constant supply of freshly oxygenated blood to all the tissues and organs within the body while the other codes pressure fluctuations into information interpreted by the brain as sound. Since each organ is placed at risk when the blood supply is interrupted or decreased, risk factors for heart disease and hearing loss are often shared.

Such common risk factors include but are not limited to the following:

· Smoking;

· High blood cholesterol;

· High blood pressure;

· Diabetes;

· Obesity.

Full Story

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New Hearing Scale Detects Hearing Loss in Elderly

September 2008

A clinically effective hearing scale to detect hearing loss in elderly people is described in a study report in the September/October issue of the Annals of Family Medicine. "Despite the high prevalence of hearing impairment and the effectiveness of rehabilitation measures, family physicians do not normally make systematic use of hearing impairment screening tests or structured interviews for all older patients," write Jesús López-Torres Hidalgo, MD, from the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Albacete, Spain, and colleagues. "We wanted to design and validate the Hearing-Dependent Daily Activities (HDDA) Scale as a means of identifying the impact of hearing loss in older persons by measuring capacity to carry out hearing-dependent activities." . . . "The HDDA scale constitutes a clinically useful instrument for identifying the impact of hearing loss on daily life in the elderly, a condition frequently overlooked during routine medical check-ups," the study authors write. "This tool has acceptable psychometric properties and high internal consistency."  Full Story

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Hearing Things: When Sounds Come Unbidden

January 2008

We are all, to some extent, human jukeboxes, able to program for pleasure and for reference. And while music sometimes sticks around longer than we would like - like a hit tune or an advertising jingle - for the most part we control what's inside our heads. This story, however, describes what can happen when a person loses control. For some people, the music comes unbidden, sticks around, makes too much noise and won't go away.  Cheryl C., (not her real name) is a patient of the well-known author and neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks. Her story appears in his new book Musicophilia. About five years ago, Cheryl was in bed reading when all of a sudden she heard a tremendous clamor. As Sacks tells it, "There were sirens, there were voices, there were bells, there was screaming, there was clanging."  She jumped up, rushed to the window to see what could be creating such noise. But when she looked she saw nothing. "I suddenly realized that these horrendous noises were in my head," she says.  Full Story

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Auditory Hallucinations or Musical Ear Syndrome

December 2007

Auditory hallucinations are defined as the perception of an auditory event such as voices or music in the absence of an external stimulus. Such hallucinations, especially the hearing of distinct, commanding voices, are often connected with psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia; however, musical hallucinations are usually non-psychiatric in nature and linked to conditions such as hearing loss, brain lesions, diseases such as epilepsy, injuries, drugs, and alcohol withdrawal. Once considered rare, auditory hallucinations, especially the perception of phantom music, are so common among persons with hearing loss that Neil G. Bauman, PhD, recommends the more neutral term "musical ear syndrome" or MES to refer to the condition.2 In his speaking engagements, up to 30 percent of his audiences will publicly admit to having heard "strange phantom voices, ethereal music or other spooky sounds that no one else hears.  Full Story

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Lasting Neurological Processes Impacted by Mild Hearing Loss

September 2007

Mild-to-moderate forms of hearing loss can have a lasting impact on the auditory cortex, according to findings by researchers at New York University's Center for Neural Science. The study, which is the first to show central effects of mild hearing loss, appeared in the August 31, 2007 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience. The study was authored by NYU scientists Han Xu, Vibhakar Kotak, and Dan Sanes, working in NYU's Center for Neural Science. Previously, researchers had been unable to conclusively determine the neurological impact of mild forms of hearing loss, which occurs when the pathway by which sound reaches the cochlea is disrupted-such as is experienced with middle ear infections during childhood. The NYU study sought to address this question in an animal model by measuring the impact of conductive hearing loss without injury to the cochlea.  Full Story

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Otoacoustic Emissions: Reducing and Preventing Noise-Induced Hearing Loss

August 2007

Hearing conservationists need effective schemes to determine whether their hearing-conservation programs (HCPs) are successful, determine whether new interventions are helpful, and establish which personnel in their care have an increased risk for noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). Currently, these goals cannot be achieved because the measure of success is also the measure of failure-by the time a hearing loss is recorded, personnel have already been damaged and the HCP has failed. Tests are needed that enable audiologists to catch hearing loss before it becomes clinically significant and-better still-stop a hearing loss from ever occurring. An otoacoustic emission (OAE) test may be the solution.  Full Story

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Meningitis Immunization Recommended for All Adolescents

July 2007

The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID) applauds and strongly supports new recommendations made yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to expand the meningococcal disease immunization recommendations to encompass a broad range of adolescents. The ACIP now recommends meningococcal vaccination for all adolescents 11-18 years of age. The vote to expand the CDC's previous meningococcal immunization recommendations took place during the June 27 meeting of the ACIP in Atlanta, Ga. The decision was based upon the disease epidemiology data showing an increased risk for disease among adolescents and young adults 11-18 years of age and increased availability of the meningococcal conjugate vaccine. Meningococcal disease is the most common cause of bacterial meningitis in US toddlers, adolescents and young adults.  Full Story

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Most vertigo cases related to hearing problems

May 2006

Editor: If you know much about the anatomy of the inner ear, you know that physical structures that are crucial to hearing and balance are located right next to each other. So you may not be surprised to learn that hearing and balance disorders often appear together. Here's a report on this phenomenon from Hear-It (http://www.press.hear-it.org/)

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Three out of four cases of vertigo are related to hearing disorders.

It is estimated that 2 percent of the general population suffer from vertigo. Among those, 75 percent also suffer from hearing problems. This was the conclusion reached at the "Scientific Congress on Vertigo, Cholesteatoma and Otitis", held by Gaes and the Spanish Society of Otorhinolaryngology and Neck and Head Pathology.

People suffering from vertigo experience a sensation of movement that does not exist, and/or other frequently related symptoms such as hearing loss, buzzing in the ears, headaches, dizziness, vomiting and loss of balance.

Common among the elderly

The prevalence of vertigo is highest, as high as 30 percent, among old people. Among young adults, the prevalence is 2 percent, according to Dr. Gonzalo Corvera, specialist surgeon in otorhinnolaryngology and founder of the Mexican Society of Otology and Otoneurology.

A number of factors cause vertigo, among them disorders of the vestibular where the organ of equilibrium is located, infections in the middle and inner ear, trauma to the head, viruses, drugs and a lack of blood flow. "Due to the proximity of the vestibular to the cochlea in the inner ear, it is quite usual that hearing is affected," added Dr. Corvera.

Check the hearing

Vertigo cases represent 5 percent of all visits to general practitioners, according to Dr. Nicolás Pérez, of the Clinic University of Navarra. It is, therefore, recommended for vertigo sufferers to have their hearing tested, as 3 out of four cases of vertigo are related to hearing disorders.

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Homing in on hearing problems

February 2006

Mimosa Acoustics has received FDA approval to market a device that can identify hearing problems related to the middle ear. But ironically, one of its greatest benefits may be ruling out severe hearing problems in newborn babies. Champaign-based Mimosa got word from the Food and Drug Administration on Feb. 10 that its wideband Middle Ear Power Analyzer had been approved for commercial use.

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Fiber Optic Breakthrough for Hearing Health Care?

January 2004

I get lots of emails from people asking all sorts of questions about hearing loss. Often my answer is that we really know surprisingly little about it. We often don't know the cause of a particular person's hearing loss. We certainly don't know why two people subjected to the same loud noise or the same medications can have drastically different responses - one suffering severe or profound hearing loss and the other seemingly unaffected.

One of the reasons that we know so little about the hearing of a particular individual is that we can't examine a person's inner ear while he's alive; existing tools are just too large.

That may change soon! Scientists at Sydney Cochlear Implant Centre have succeeded in creating a tiny endoscope consisting of a single optical fiber that is just half a millimeter wide. The fiber is small enough to allow exploration of previously inaccessible parts of the body, including the inner ear. But don't rush down to your ENT and demand an examination just yet - the optical image available using the new endoscope is still pretty crude. But the researchers who developed it are working on an improved version with much better optical qualities. It may soon be possible to see what's going on in YOUR inner ear.

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House Bill Seeks to Provide Direct Audiology Access

Editor: If you're on Medicare, you probably know that you can't just head over to your local audiologist and expect Medicare to cover it; you need a referral from your doctor first.

That may soon change. Representative Jim Ryun (R-KS) and Representative Lois Capps (D-CA) just introduced legislation that would allow Medicare recipients to seek audiology services without a physician referral. Federal employees are already able to seek direct audiological care, and Medicaid is considering a similar measure.