The Experience Of Hearing Loss

Millions of Americans experience some degree of hearing loss. The Social Security Administration (SSA) operates programs that provide cash disability benefits to people with permanent impairments like hearing loss, if they can show that their impairments meet stringent SSA criteria and their earnings are below an SSA threshold. The National Research Council convened an expert committee at the request of the SSA to study the issues related to disability determination for people with hearing loss. This volume is the product of that study. Hearing Loss: Determining Eligibility for Social Security Benefits reviews current knowledge about hearing loss and its measurement and treatment, and provides an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the current processes and criteria. It recommends changes to strengthen the disability determination process and ensure its reliability and fairness. The book addresses criteria for selection of pure tone and speech tests, guidelines for test administration, testing of hearing in noise, special issues related to testing children, and the difficulty of predicting work capacity from clinical hearing test results. It should be useful to audiologists, otolaryngologists, disability advocates, and others who are concerned with people who have hearing loss.

Hearing loss is a common chronic condition which is often poorly recognized but can have multiple negative impacts, not just on the lives of those directly affected, but also those living with them. People with impaired hearing may begin a long and uncertain journey involving a number of key stages, from emerging awareness and help-seeking, to diagnosis, adjustment, and self-evaluation. Based on a model of person-centered audiological rehabilitation, this book explains why it is important to understand both patients’ own experiences, and those of their communication partners, over time. It focuses particularly on the human dynamics of hearing loss, exploring the broader consequences of hearing loss for the individual, family members, and wider society. In particular the book: gives insight into the patients' and their communication partners’ experiences and perspectives through clear and telling first-hand narrative accounts; examines how people understand their own hearing loss, reflect on their experiences with hearing aids – both positive and negative – and evaluate treatment options; considers the changes needed to conversations in order to include all communication partners, whether with impaired hearing or not; and discusses consequences of hearing loss using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). With its explicit aim to increase awareness of the need to include the patient and close relatives in the process of rehabilitation, this new text makes an important contribution to further improve evidence-based practice in the field of audiological rehabilitation. An ideal text for audiology, ENT, and nursing students of all levels.

The loss of hearing - be it gradual or acute, mild or severe, present since birth or acquired in older age - can have significant effects on one's communication abilities, quality of life, social participation, and health. Despite this, many people with hearing loss do not seek or receive hearing health care. The reasons are numerous, complex, and often interconnected. For some, hearing health care is not affordable. For others, the appropriate services are difficult to access, or individuals do not know how or where to access them. Others may not want to deal with the stigma that they and society may associate with needing hearing health care and obtaining that care. Still others do not recognize they need hearing health care, as hearing loss is an invisible health condition that often worsens gradually over time. In the United States, an estimated 30 million individuals (12.7 percent of Americans ages 12 years or older) have hearing loss. Globally, hearing loss has been identified as the fifth leading cause of years lived with disability. Successful hearing health care enables individuals with hearing loss to have the freedom to communicate in their environments in ways that are culturally appropriate and that preserve their dignity and function. Hearing Health Care for Adults focuses on improving the accessibility and affordability of hearing health care for adults of all ages. This study examines the hearing health care system, with a focus on non-surgical technologies and services, and offers recommendations for improving access to, the affordability of, and the quality of hearing health care for adults of all ages.

Hearing Loss: Causes, Prevention, and Treatment covers hearing loss, causes and prevention, treatments, and future directions in the field, also looking at the cognitive problems that can develop. To avoid the “silent epidemic of hearing loss, it is necessary to promote early screening, use hearing protection, and change public attitudes toward noise. Successful treatments of hearing loss deal with restoring hearing sensitivity via hearing aids, including cochlear, brainstem, or midbrain implants. Both the technical aspects and effects on the quality of life of these devices are discussed. The integration of all aspects of hearing, hearing loss, prevention, and treatment make this a perfect one-volume course in audiology at the graduate student level. However, it is also a great reference for established audiologists, ear surgeons, neurologists, and pediatric and geriatric professionals. Presents an in-depth overview of hearing loss, causes and prevention, treatments, and future directions in the field Written for researchers and clinicians, such as auditory neuroscientists, audiologists, neurologists, speech pathologists, pediatricians, and geriatricians Presents the benefits and problems with hearing aids and cochlear implants Includes important quality of life issues

This book looks at how hearing loss among adults was experienced, viewed and treated in Britain before the National Health Service. We explore the changing status of ‘hard of hearing’ people during the nineteenth century as categorized among diverse and changing categories of ‘deafness’. Then we explore the advisory literature for managing hearing loss, and techniques for communicating with hearing aids, lip-reading and correspondence networks. From surveying the commercial selling and daily use of hearing aids, we see how adverse developments in eugenics prompted otologists to focus primarily on the prevention of deafness. The final chapter shows how hearing loss among First World War combatants prompted hearing specialists to take a more supportive approach, while it fell to the National Institute for the Deaf, formed in 1924, to defend hard of hearing people against unscrupulous hearing aid vendors. This book is suitable for both academic audiences and the general reading public. All royalties from sale of this book will be given to Action on Hearing Loss and the National Deaf Children’s Society.

Contents: The Ear and Hearing, Causes of Hearing Impairment, Assessment of Hearing and Hearing Loss, Hearing Impairment and Child Development, Hearing Aids and Other Devices, Lipreading and Auditory Training, Teaching Strategies, Grammar and Speech: Teaching and Training Techniques, Teaching Reading and Writing, Parent Guidance and Counselling.

Some 28 million people in America and 350 million people worldwide live with hearing loss. How do these people and their families cope? What are their experiences of pain, humor, and hope? What support do medicine and technology now offer them, and what is on the horizon? In this engaging and practical book, David Myers, who has himself suffered gradual hearing loss, explores the problems faced by the hard of hearing at home and at work and provides information on the new technology and groundbreaking surgical procedures that are available. Drawing on both his own experiences and his expertise as a social psychologist, Myers recounts how he has coped with hearing loss and how he has incorporated technological aids into his life. The family and friends of the hard of hearing also face adjustments. Myers addresses their situation and provides advice for them on how best to alert loved ones to a hearing problem, persuade them to seek assistance, and encourage them to adjust to and use hearing aids.

The Auditory Brain and Age-Related Hearing Impairment provides an overview of the interaction between age-related hearing impairments and cognitive brain function. This monograph elucidates the techniques used in the connectome and other brain-network studies based on electrophysiological methods. Discussions of the manifestations of age-related hearing impairment, the causes of degradation of sound processing, compensatory changes in the human brain, and rehabilitation and intervention are included. There is currently a surge in content on aging and hearing loss, the benefits of hearing aids and implants, and the correlation between hearing loss, cognitive decline and early onset of dementia. Given the changing demographics, treatment of age-related hearing impairment need not just be bottom-up (i.e., by amplification and/or cochlear implantation), but also top-down by addressing the impact of the changing brain on communication. The role of age-related capacity for audio-visual integration and its role in assisting treatment have only recently been investigated, thus this area needs more attention. Relates the techniques used in the connectome and other brain-network studies to the human auditory-cortex and age-related hearing loss research findings Examines the side effects of age-related hearing impairment and their impact on the quality of life for the elderly Evaluates the importance of multi-modal means in the rehabilitation of the elderly with hearing aids and cochlear implants Discusses the role of neurostimulation and various training procedures to halt, or potentially reverse, cognitive decline in the elderly