Hearing Loss

What is hearing loss?
Hearing loss happens when something affects your hearing system.
If you have hearing loss, you may have trouble understanding, following or participating in conversations.
Hearing loss can affect your ability to work, communicate with others and generally enjoy life. Most often, hearing loss can’t be reversed.
But audiologists — healthcare providers who specialize in diagnosing and treating hearing loss — can help.

Is hearing loss common?
Yes, it is. More than 1 in 10 people in the United States have some degree of hearing loss:

An estimated 60,000 people have hearing loss in one ear (unilateral hearing loss).
About 1 in 3 adults over 65 and nearly half adults 75 and older have age-related hearing loss.
About 2 in 1,000 babies are born with some type of hearing loss.

Types of hearing loss
There are three types of hearing loss:

Conductive hearing loss: In this hearing loss, something keeps sound from passing through your outer ear (ear canal) or your middle ear.
Sensorineural hearing loss: This hearing loss happens when something damages your inner ear over time.
Rarely, sensorineural hearing loss happens very quickly. This is sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL), or sudden deafness.
SSHL may happen all at once or over a few days.
Mixed hearing loss: This happens when you have issues in your middle or outer ear (conductive hearing loss)
and your inner ear (sensorineural hearing loss).

What are stages of hearing loss?
If you have a hearing test, your audiologist will share test results and explain what they mean.
Often, hearing loss is classified as the degree of loss.

Association, the degrees of loss are:

Normal.
Slight.
Mild.
Moderate.
Moderately severe.
Severe.
Profound.