Hearing Loss
Treatment and Research
Your doctor can recommend strategies to help reduce the effects of a hearing loss. Scientists are studying ways to develop new, more effective methods to treat and prevent hearing loss.
Hearing Aids
Many people who have a hearing loss wear a hearing aid. A hearing aid is an electronic, battery-operated device that makes sounds louder to the wearer. Unfortunately, only 16 to 17 percent of adults ages 20 to 69 years with hearing loss have used hearing aids, while 25 to 29 percent of adults ages 70 years and older with hearing loss have used hearing aids.
Hearing aids come in many shapes, sizes, and styles. Some hearing aids fit inside the outer ear or the ear canal, while others fit behind the ear.
Types of Hearing Aids
Hearing aids can be analog or digital. Some analog aids are custom-built to meet a person's hearing needs. More advanced analog models can be adjusted with a computer to suit a number of environments, such as a room with a lot of background noise.
Digital hearing aids use a computer chip to process sounds, and are the most flexible in adjusting to different environments. They are also the most expensive.
An audiologist can help you determine if a hearing aid, or even two hearing aids, is the right treatment for you. Wearing two hearing aids may help balance sounds, improve your understanding of words in noisy situations, and make it easier to locate the source of sounds.
Other devices also can help you hear in certain listening environments. TV listening systems help you enjoy television or radio without being bothered by other sounds around you. Some hearing aids can be plugged directly into TVs, stereos, microphones, and personal FM systems to help you hear better.
Some hearing aids may have certain added features installed, such as a telecoil. A telecoil is a small magnetic coil that allows users to receive sound through the circuitry of the hearing aid, rather than through its microphone. This makes it easier to hear conversations over the telephone.
A telecoil also helps people hear in public facilities that have installed special sound systems, called induction loop systems. Induction loop systems can be found in many churches, schools, airports, and auditoriums.
Alerts such as doorbells, smoke detectors, and alarm clocks can give you a signal that you can see or a vibration that you can feel. For example, a flashing light can let you know someone is at the door or on the phone.
If your hearing loss is severe and of a certain type, your doctor may suggest that you talk to an otolaryngologist -- a surgeon who specializes in ear, nose, and throat diseases -- about a cochlear implant.
Cochlear Implants
A cochlear implant is a small electronic device that the surgeon places under the skin and behind the ear. The device picks up sounds, changes them to electrical signals, and sends them past the non-working part of the inner ear and on to the brain.
A cochlear implant does not restore or create normal hearing. Instead, it can help people who are deaf or who have a severe hearing loss be more aware of their surroundings and understand speech, sometimes well enough to use the telephone.
But learning to interpret sounds from the implant takes time and practice. A speech-language pathologist and audiologist can help you with this part of the process.
New and Improved Treatments Under Study
Researchers are studying the causes of hearing loss as well as new treatments. For example, they are studying ways to improve hearing aids so that wearers can hear certain sounds more clearly even when a person is surrounded by background noise.
They are also studying how to improve cochlear implants to enhance a person's ability to understand sounds. And they are conducting a study on twins ages 50 and over to determine the extent to which age-related hearing loss runs in families.
