The causes of hearing loss are very diverse, it can be both congenital and acquired. It is from the correctly established causes that the effectiveness and even the very possibility of curing the disease often depends.
Causes of the disease in children
Unfortunately, in recent years, congenital deafness is increasingly common in young children. In most cases, it is due to genetic factors. Sometimes, if a child has a hearing loss, this may be the result of an illness suffered during pregnancy or taking strong medications in the early stages.
If the disease is diagnosed at an age when the baby has not yet learned to speak, we are talking about early hearing loss. Due to the fact that the child is not able to perceive sounds normally, he subsequently has problems with the formation of the speech apparatus. Therefore, it is very important to timely identify the disease and take all possible measures to cure it or compensate for the hearing loss.
In rare cases, hearing loss in children develops due to small objects entering the ear canal. Staying there for a long time, they provoke inflammatory processes, can cause purulent otitis media or damage to the eardrum. If you notice that your child's ear is hard of hearing, but does not hurt, the reasons for this can be the most commonplace - from a sulfuric plug to a foreign object: a stuck cotton wool, a bead, water ingress.
It is better not to try to solve the problem on your own, but to take the baby to an appointment with a specialist. He will carefully examine the ears, perform several tests, and, if necessary, wash the sulfur plug or remove the stuck object. Often, after these simple manipulations, hearing returns within a few hours.
Hearing loss in adults
The reasons for hearing loss in adults are more varied. Throughout life, a person is influenced by many different factors, including pathogenic ones. The risk group primarily includes people:
- constantly working in noisy production;
- professional swimmers and divers;
- those who go without a headdress during the cold season;
- for a long time in the vicinity of an operating air conditioner;
- have had meningitis and other acute infectious diseases;
- suffering from chronic ear diseases: otitis media, otosclerosis, etc.;
- have taken strong antibiotics or other medications;
- sexually promiscuous, drug addicts, alcoholics.
Hearing loss develops gradually under the influence of pathogenic factors. The sooner it is identified, the more likely it is to completely heal and restore hearing.
The main reasons for which sensorineural hearing loss occurs in adulthood is damage to the cochlear hairs as a result of infection or trauma. Very rarely - damage to the areas of the brain that are responsible for the perception of sound. In this case, the person hears normally, but cannot make out the speech.
Conductive hearing loss, in which the perception of sound is impaired due to damage or destruction of the eardrum and / or ossicles. This is the most difficult to treat type of hearing loss, which often requires surgery and implantation.
At the age after 45-50 years, in about 20% of people, due to the ongoing irreversible degenerative processes, senile hearing loss appears and begins to progress. It is impossible to stop the development of the disease at the modern level of medicine, but it is quite possible to slow down the process.
If there is a sudden and severe hearing loss, the causes may be viral. Sometimes, circulatory disorders in the inner ear are caused by the development of a tumor that constricts the blood vessels. Sudden deafness can occur under the influence of ototoxic drugs. In most cases, with timely and correct treatment, it is reversible.
Prevention and treatment
The simplest prevention of hearing loss is to reduce noise in everyday life as much as possible. It is very harmful to listen to loud music through headphones, visit discos and nightclubs too often, turn on the TV sound to the maximum. What to do if your head hurts? Thousands of people ask myself this question. And today it is possible to answer this question. One has only to visit the headache school http://headacheschool.ru/ in which famous experts will help not only get rid of the headache, but also establish the reasons why this pain haunts you. It is useful to follow other simple rules:
- do not take antibiotics without a doctor's prescription;
- immediately and to the end to cure all viral and infectious diseases;
- during pregnancy, do not take any medication unless absolutely necessary;
- do not abuse alcohol, completely abandon drug-containing drugs.
If you nevertheless find yourself with hearing loss, only a doctor should determine the causes and treatment. Often, attempts to solve the problem on their own lead to the fact that the disease progresses rapidly and it becomes more and more difficult to cure it completely.
