Self-Management of Hearing Impairment

Author(s):  
Lucy Handscomb ◽  
Gabrielle H. Saunders ◽  
Derek J. Hoare

Hearing impairment is defined as hearing loss that leads to difficulties in hearing, or deafness, and affects an estimated 360 million people worldwide. Consequences of hearing impairment include difficulties in communication, restricting social participation, and leading to feelings of isolation. Hearing impairment cannot be cured, but its consequences can be reduced with self-management whereby the individual adopts, refines, and maintains health behaviors, supported through the provision and availability of suitable interventions. The barriers to self-management are many and should be explored to inform decision-making between the clinician and the individual with hearing impairment. The clinician can then facilitate self-management that is informed, realistic, and fully reflects the preferences and values of the individual.

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Convery ◽  
Gitte Keidser ◽  
Louise Hickson ◽  
Carly Meyer

Purpose Hearing loss self-management refers to the knowledge and skills people use to manage the effects of hearing loss on all aspects of their daily lives. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between self-reported hearing loss self-management and hearing aid benefit and satisfaction. Method Thirty-seven adults with hearing loss, all of whom were current users of bilateral hearing aids, participated in this observational study. The participants completed self-report inventories probing their hearing loss self-management and hearing aid benefit and satisfaction. Correlation analysis was used to investigate the relationship between individual domains of hearing loss self-management and hearing aid benefit and satisfaction. Results Participants who reported better self-management of the effects of their hearing loss on their emotional well-being and social participation were more likely to report less aided listening difficulty in noisy and reverberant environments and greater satisfaction with the effect of their hearing aids on their self-image. Participants who reported better self-management in the areas of adhering to treatment, participating in shared decision making, accessing services and resources, attending appointments, and monitoring for changes in their hearing and functional status were more likely to report greater satisfaction with the sound quality and performance of their hearing aids. Conclusion Study findings highlight the potential for using information about a patient's hearing loss self-management in different domains as part of clinical decision making and management planning.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
B Barr

Abstract The European Health Equity Status Report makes innovative use of microdata, at the level of the individual, to decompose the relative contributions of five essential underlying conditions to inequities in health and well-being. These essential conditions comprise: (1) Health services (2) Income security and social protection (3) Living conditions (4) Social and human capital (5) Employment and working conditions. Combining microdata across over twenty sources, the work of HESRi has also produced disaggregated indicators in health, well-being, and each of the five essential conditions. In conjunction with indicators of policy performance and investment, the HESRi Health Equity Dataset of over 100 indicators is the first of its kind, as a resource for monitoring and analysing inequities across the essential conditions and policies to inform decision making and action to reduce gaps in health and well-being.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giordani Santos Silveira ◽  
José Nelson Mucha

Objective: In this study, we aimed highlight some clinical features present in patients whose maxillary lateral incisors are missing, and proposed more logical, rational and predictable solutions to inform decision making in rehabilitation procedures. Methods: Literature review and discussion. Conclusion: Choosing the best possible treatment for congenital absence of maxillary lateral incisors depends on the multidisciplinary diagnosis of facial, occlusal, functional and periodontal features. It also depends on the individual long-term stability, and it does not only rely on canine-guided disocclusion.


1997 ◽  
Vol 106 (3) ◽  
pp. 210-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig W. Newman ◽  
Gerald A. Hug ◽  
Gary P. Jacobson ◽  
Sharon A. Sandridge

Using the Hearing Handicap Inventory for Adults (HHIA), we assessed self-perceived hearing handicap in a sample of 63 patients having either unilaterally normal hearing or a mild hearing loss (pure tone average ≤40 dB hearing level). Large intersubject variability in responses to the HHIA confirmed observations that reactions to minimal hearing impairment vary greatly among patients. The individual differences in responses highlight the importance of quantifying the perceived communication and psychosocial handicap, which cannot be determined from the audiogram alone. An item examination of responses to the HHIA revealed a number of emotional and social-situational problems encountered by patients with minimal hearing loss.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sumantra Chatterjee ◽  
Thomas Lufkin

Sensorineural hearing loss is one of the most common disabilities in humans. It is estimated that about 278 million people worldwide have slight to extreme hearing loss in both ears, which results in an economic loss for the country and personal loss for the individual. It is thus critical to have a deeper understanding of the causes for hearing loss to better manage and treat the affected individuals. The mouse serves as an excellent model to study and recapitulate some of these phenotypes, identify new genes which cause deafness, and to study their roles in vivo and in detail. Mutant mice have been instrumental in elucidating the function and mechanisms of the inner ear. The development and morphogenesis of the inner ear from an ectodermal layer into distinct auditory and vestibular components depends on well-coordinated gene expression and well-orchestrated signaling cascades within the otic vesicle and interactions with surrounding layers of tissues. Any disruption in these pathways can lead to hearing impairment. This review takes a look at some of the genes and their corresponding mice mutants that have shed light on the mechanism governing hearing impairment (HI) in humans.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (07) ◽  
pp. 648-655 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabrielle H. Saunders ◽  
Ian Odgear ◽  
Anna Cosgrove ◽  
Melissa T. Frederick

AbstractThere have been numerous recent reports on the association between hearing impairment and cognitive function, such that the cognition of adults with hearing loss is poorer relative to the cognition of adults with normal hearing (NH), even when amplification is used. However, it is not clear the extent to which this is testing artifact due to the individual with hearing loss being unable to accurately hear the test stimuli.The primary purpose of this study was to examine whether use of amplification during cognitive screening with the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) improves performance on the MoCA. Secondarily, we investigated the effects of hearing ability on MoCA performance, by comparing the performance of individuals with and without hearing impairment.Participants were 42 individuals with hearing impairment and 19 individuals with NH. Of the individuals with hearing impairment, 22 routinely used hearing aids; 20 did not use hearing aids.Following a written informec consent process, all participants completed pure tone audiometry, speech testing in quiet (Maryland consonant-nucleus-consonant [CNC] words) and in noise (Quick Speech in Noise [QuickSIN] test), and the MoCA. The speech testing and MoCA were completed twice. Individuals with hearing impairment completed testing once unaided and once with amplification, whereas individuals with NH completed unaided testing twice.The individuals with hearing impairment performed significantly less well on the MoCA than those without hearing impairment for unaided testing, and the use of amplification did not significantly change performance. This is despite the finding that amplification significantly improved the performance of the hearing aid users on the measures of speech in quiet and speech in noise. Furthermore, there were strong correlations between MoCA score and the four frequency pure tone average, Maryland CNC score and QuickSIN, which remain moderate to strong when the analyses were adjusted for age.It is concluded that the individuals with hearing loss here performed less well on the MoCA than individuals with NH and that the use of amplification did not compensate for this performance deficit. Nonetheless, this should not be taken to suggest the use of amplification during testing is unnecessary because it might be that other unmeasured factors, such as effort required to perform or fatigue, were decreased with the use of amplification.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 233121652110656
Author(s):  
Oliver Scheuregger ◽  
Jens Hjortkjær ◽  
Torsten Dau

Sound textures are a broad class of sounds defined by their homogeneous temporal structure. It has been suggested that sound texture perception is mediated by time-averaged summary statistics measured from early stages of the auditory system. The ability of young normal-hearing (NH) listeners to identify synthetic sound textures increases as the statistics of the synthetic texture approach those of its real-world counterpart. In sound texture discrimination, young NH listeners utilize the fine temporal stimulus information for short-duration stimuli, whereas they switch to a time-averaged statistical representation as the stimulus’ duration increases. The present study investigated how younger and older listeners with a sensorineural hearing impairment perform in the corresponding texture identification and discrimination tasks in which the stimuli were amplified to compensate for the individual listeners’ loss of audibility. In both hearing impaired (HI) listeners and NH controls, sound texture identification performance increased as the number of statistics imposed during the synthesis stage increased, but hearing impairment was accompanied by a significant reduction in overall identification accuracy. Sound texture discrimination performance was measured across listener groups categorized by age and hearing loss. Sound texture discrimination performance was unaffected by hearing loss at all excerpt durations. The older listeners’ sound texture and exemplar discrimination performance decreased for signals of short excerpt duration, with older HI listeners performing better than older NH listeners. The results suggest that the time-averaged statistic representations of sound textures provide listeners with cues which are robust to the effects of age and sensorineural hearing loss.


Author(s):  
Kalyani Mandke ◽  
Rashmi Deshpande

Hearing impairment is common throughout the world, and it is estimated that 50% of all deafness and hearing impairment is preventable. The World Health Organization (WHO, 1999) estimates that there are 255 million people worldwide with a hearing impairment; of those, two-thirds live in the developing countries. Although hearing loss is not a death causing disease, the implication of hearing impairment for the individual, family, and community is tremendous. The far-reaching implications of hearing loss, both in terms of development of communication skills as well as social, economic, and quality of life issues, warrant highlighting the magnitude and severity of the problem. This disability cannot be “seen” and, therefore, has been low-profile. At the same time, hearing loss programs in India are less developed than programs for individuals diagnosed with blindness. It is well documented that hearing loss and deafness is preventable, provided it is detected early and managed properly through appropriate health education and program development.


2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-12
Author(s):  
Robert J. Barth ◽  
John E. Meyers

Abstract Hearing impairment rating determination is described in the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment (AMA Guides), Sixth Edition, Section 11.2a, Criteria for Rating Impairment Due to Hearing Loss. A hearing impairment evaluation for adults who have acquired language skills is derived from a pure-tone audiogram and always is based on the functioning of both ears even though hearing loss may be present in only one ear. Audiometers should be properly calibrated, and technicians should be appropriately trained to obtain accurate measurements. Audiograms typically are obtained at four frequencies (test frequencies): 500, 1000, 2000, and 3000 Hz, which are considered to be representative of everyday auditory speech ranges. The evaluator tests the individual's right and left ears at the test frequencies and adds the decibel levels for each of these frequencies for each ear separately; consults Table 11-2, Computation of Binaural Hearing Impairment; and finally consults Table 11-3, Relationship of Binaural Hearing Impairment to Impairment of the Whole Person. Tinnitus can be rated if the individual experiences hearing loss in the ear and this loss affects speech discrimination; loss is limited to a maximum of 5% loss. The AMA Guides provides no correction in the hearing section for age-related loss of hearing, although the latter may be apportionable. A table presents a model hearing impairment report.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document