Hearing loss is a partial or total inability to hear. Hearing loss may be present at birth or acquired at any time afterwards. Hearing loss may occur in one or both ears. In children, hearing problems can affect the ability to acquire spoken language, and in adults it can create difficulties with social interaction and at work. Hearing loss can be temporary or permanent. Hearing loss related to age usually affects both ears and is due to cochlear hair cell loss. In some people, particularly older people, hearing loss can result in loneliness.
Audiology is a branch of science that studies hearing, balance, and related disorders. Audiologists treat those with hearing loss and proactively prevent related damage. By employing various testing strategies, audiologists aim to determine whether someone has normal sensitivity to sounds. If hearing loss is identified, audiologists determine which portions of hearing are affected, to what degree, and where the lesion causing the hearing loss is found. If an audiologist determines that a hearing loss or vestibular abnormality is present, they will provide recommendations for interventions or rehabilitation.
World Health Day is a global health awareness day celebrated every year on 7 April, under the sponsorship of the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as other related organizations.
H.E.A.R. is a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing hearing loss, mainly from loud rock music. The acronym stands for Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers. It was founded in 1988 by rock musician Kathy Peck and physician Flash Gordon, M.D. after Kathy developed tinnitus and hearing loss after playing with the band The Contractions.
Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is a hearing impairment resulting from exposure to loud sound. People may have a loss of perception of a narrow range of frequencies or impaired perception of sound including sensitivity to sound or ringing in the ears. When exposure to hazards such as noise occur at work and is associated with hearing loss, it is referred to as occupational hearing loss.
Pure-tone audiometry is the main hearing test used to identify hearing threshold levels of an individual, enabling determination of the degree, type and configuration of a hearing loss and thus providing a basis for diagnosis and management. Pure-tone audiometry is a subjective, behavioural measurement of a hearing threshold, as it relies on patient responses to pure tone stimuli. Therefore, pure-tone audiometry is only used on adults and children old enough to cooperate with the test procedure. As with most clinical tests, standardized calibration of the test environment, the equipment and the stimuli is needed before testing proceeds. Pure-tone audiometry only measures audibility thresholds, rather than other aspects of hearing such as sound localization and speech recognition. However, there are benefits to using pure-tone audiometry over other forms of hearing test, such as click auditory brainstem response (ABR). Pure-tone audiometry provides ear specific thresholds, and uses frequency specific pure tones to give place specific responses, so that the configuration of a hearing loss can be identified. As pure-tone audiometry uses both air and bone conduction audiometry, the type of loss can also be identified via the air-bone gap. Although pure-tone audiometry has many clinical benefits, it is not perfect at identifying all losses, such as ‘dead regions’ of the cochlea and neuropathies such as auditory processing disorder (APD). This raises the question of whether or not audiograms accurately predict someone's perceived degree of disability.
Hearing, or auditory perception, is the ability to perceive sounds through an organ, such as an ear, by detecting vibrations as periodic changes in the pressure of a surrounding medium. The academic field concerned with hearing is auditory science.
World Blood Donor Day (WBDD) is held on June 14 each year. The event was organised for the first time in 2004, by four core international organizations: the World Health Organization, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies; the International Federation of Blood Donor Organizations (IFBDO) and the International Society of Blood Transfusion (ISBT) to raise awareness of the need for safe blood and blood products, and to thank blood donors for their voluntary, life-saving gifts of blood. World Blood Donor Day is one of 11 official global public health campaigns marked by the World Health Organization (WHO), along with World Health Day, World Chagas Disease Day, World Tuberculosis Day, World Immunization Week, World Patient Safety Day, World Malaria Day, World No Tobacco Day, World Hepatitis Day, World Antimicrobial Awareness Week and World AIDS Day.
Amblyaudia is a term coined by Dr. Deborah Moncrieff to characterize a specific pattern of performance from dichotic listening tests. Dichotic listening tests are widely used to assess individuals for binaural integration, a type of auditory processing skill. During the tests, individuals are asked to identify different words presented simultaneously to the two ears. Normal listeners can identify the words fairly well and show a small difference between the two ears with one ear slightly dominant over the other. For the majority of listeners, this small difference is referred to as a "right-ear advantage" because their right ear performs slightly better than their left ear. But some normal individuals produce a "left-ear advantage" during dichotic tests and others perform at equal levels in the two ears. Amblyaudia is diagnosed when the scores from the two ears are significantly different with the individual's dominant ear score much higher than the score in the non-dominant ear Researchers interested in understanding the neurophysiological underpinnings of amblyaudia consider it to be a brain based hearing disorder that may be inherited or that may result from auditory deprivation during critical periods of brain development. Individuals with amblyaudia have normal hearing sensitivity but have difficulty hearing in noisy environments like restaurants or classrooms. Even in quiet environments, individuals with amblyaudia may fail to understand what they are hearing, especially if the information is new or complicated. Amblyaudia can be conceptualized as the auditory analog of the better known central visual disorder amblyopia. The term “lazy ear” has been used to describe amblyaudia although it is currently not known whether it stems from deficits in the auditory periphery or from other parts of the auditory system in the brain, or both. A characteristic of amblyaudia is suppression of activity in the non-dominant auditory pathway by activity in the dominant pathway which may be genetically determined and which could also be exacerbated by conditions throughout early development.
The Safe-in-Sound Excellence in Hearing Loss Prevention Award is an occupational health and safety award that was established in 2007 through a partnership between the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the National Hearing Conservation Association (NHCA). In 2018, the partnership was extended to include the Council for Accreditation in Occupational Hearing Conservation (CAOHC).
Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written with a lower case d. It later came to be used in a cultural context to refer to those who primarily communicate through sign language regardless of hearing ability, often capitalized as Deaf and referred to as "big D Deaf" in speech and sign. The two definitions overlap but are not identical, as hearing loss includes cases that are not severe enough to impact spoken language comprehension, while cultural Deafness includes hearing people who use sign language, such as children of deaf adults.
Starkey Hearing Technologies is an American privately owned company based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota that makes hearing aids, and is one of the largest hearing aid manufacturers in the world. As of 2019, the company had more than 5,000 employees in 24 facilities, serving more than 100 markets worldwide, and is the only American-owned global hearing aid manufacturer.
WS Audiology is a privately-owned manufacturer of hearing aids with headquarters in Denmark and Singapore with roots going back to 1878 and Siemens AG. The current company was created following the 2019 merger of Sivantos Group and Widex. Prior to that, Sivantos was spun off from Siemens after Siemens AG sold the company to EQT and Santo Holding in 2015. WS Audiology employs about 12,000 people in more than 125 countries. In fiscal year 2022-2023, the company generated revenue of €2.47 billion and adjusted EBITDA of €480 million.
The Hear the World Foundation is a corporate nonprofit foundation founded by Sonova working towards equal opportunities and better quality of life for people with hearing loss. The Foundation operates as grant-giver supporting project-partnerships in four specific areas:
Musicians can experience a number of health problems related to the practice and performance of music. The differences in career paths, occupations and performance scenarios are some of the determinants of a wide range of possible health effects.
Audiology and hearing health professionals in India is made up of Indian healthcare professional that focus on audiological and hearing problems.
H.870 "Guidelines for safe listening devices/systems" is an ITU-T Recommendation, developed in collaboration with the World Health Organization. It specifies standards for safe listening to prevent hearing loss and was first approved in 2018. In March 2022, version 2 was approved and published.
World Patient Safety Day (WPSD), observed annually on 17 September, aims to raise global awareness about patient safety and call for solidarity and united action by all countries and international partners to reduce patient harm. Patient safety focuses on preventing and reducing risks, errors and harm that happen to patients during the provision of health care.
Safe listening is a framework for health promotion actions to ensure that sound-related recreational activities do not pose a risk to hearing.
Global Audiology is an open access platform designed to enhance understanding of audiology education and practice worldwide. Despite the global and individual burden of hearing disorders the World Health Organization (WHO) reported a substantial gap between the need and access to hearing care services, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Among several audiological services that can be provided, it is estimated that only 17% of those who can benefit from a hearing aid have access to one. The WHO report emphasizes the importance of integrating ear and hearing care into national health plans to achieve universal health care coverage.
