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Hearing impairment

Hearing impairment is when the hearing is affected by a disease, disorder or injury. Deafness is a profound loss of hearing. Leading charity, the RNID, estimates that there are between eight and nine million deaf and hearing impaired people in the UK. This number is expected to rise as the number of people over the age of 60 increases.

Hearing loss can be present at birth (deaf or hard of hearing people) or develop in childhood or adulthood (deafened people). It occurs for a large number of reasons, which can be categorised into conductive and sensorineural.

Conductive means that sound coming into the ear is blocked in some way from travelling to the inner ear. Conductive causes include:

  • Middle ear infections,
  • Glue ear,
  • Wax blockage,
  • Eardrum injury,
  • Otosclerosis (a disorder of the middle ear),
  • and Rheumatoid arthritis.

Sensorineural causes are ones where the pathway the sound travels along is damaged. These include:

  • Age-related hearing loss,
  • Acoustic trauma (physical damage to the ear),
  • Viral infections such as mumps or measles,
  • Meniere’s disease,
  • Acoustic neuroma (a non-cancerous growth near the hearing nerves) ,
  • Meningitis,
  • Encephalitis,
  • Multiple sclerosis,
  • Brain tumours,
  • and Stroke.