Understanding Speech Audiometry and Your Hearing Health
Communication is at the heart of our daily lives – from morning
Hearing loss has a reputation for advancing gradually. It can be easy to miss the symptoms due to this. (After all, you’re just turning up the volume on your TV now and then, it’s nothing to be concerned about, right?) In some cases that’s true but in some cases, it isn’t. It turns out hearing loss can also happen abruptly and without much warning.
It can be truly alarming when the state of your health suddenly changes. When people’s hair falls out slowly over a really long period of time, for example, they would most likely just blame it on aging and simply assume they’re balding. But if all of your hair fell out overnight, you would likely feel compelled to schedule a doctor’s appointment as soon as possible (and rightfully so).
When you suddenly lose your ability to hear, it’s the same thing. When this happens, acting fast is essential.
Long-term hearing loss is more common than sudden hearing loss or SSHL for short. But it’s not exactly uncommon for people to experience sudden hearing loss. About 1 in 5000 individuals per year suffer from SSHL.
The symptoms of sudden hearing loss commonly include the following:
If you experience SSHL, you might be wondering: is sudden deafness permanent? Actually, within a couple of weeks, hearing will recover for around 50% of people who experience SSHL. However, it’s relevant to note that one key to success is rapid treatment. This means you will want to undergo treatment as quickly as possible. After you first notice the symptoms, you should wait no longer than 72 hours.
In most cases, it’s a good plan to treat sudden hearing loss as a medical emergency. The longer you wait, the greater your risk of sudden hearing loss becoming permanent.
Some of the leading causes of sudden hearing loss include the following:
Most of the time, we will be better able to help you formulate an effective treatment if we can figure out what type of sudden hearing loss you’re dealing with. But sometimes it doesn’t work that way. Numerous kinds of SSHL are managed similarly, so knowing the exact cause isn’t always required for successful treatment.
So what should you do if you wake up one morning and find that your hearing is gone? Well, there are some important steps you should take right away. Above all, you should not just wait for it to go away. That’s a bad plan! Instead, you should get treatment within 72 hours. Getting in touch with us for immediate treatment is the smartest plan. We’ll be in the best position to help you figure out what’s wrong and how to treat it.
We will probably conduct an audiogram in our office to find out your level of hearing loss (this is the examination where we have you put on headphones and raise your hand when you hear a beep, it’s completely non-invasive). We can make sure you don’t have an obstruction or a conductive issue.
The first round of treatment will usually include steroids. For some individuals, these steroids could be injected directly into the ear. In other situations, oral medication might be enough. SSHL of many root causes (or no known cause) can be effectively treated with steroids. You may need to use a medication to reduce your immune response if your SSHL is due to an autoimmune disease.
If you or somebody you know has suddenly lost the ability to hear, call us right away for an assessment.
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