How’s your hearing?

Don’t suffer in silence, EarLab can help get you enjoying life again

It can be difficult to tell someone you think they need to get their hearing checked. Even for older people, the stigma of hearing loss and hearing aids leads many to ignore the problem for years.

Hearing loss can be frustrating but also socially isolating, meaning people withdraw from busy environments or background noise.

Even from the age of 40, without ear disease, we start to lose our ability to hear high pitched sounds. Some, with a family history of hearing loss or with ear disease, will lose hearing more appreciably at a faster rate. Hearing loss in this respect is due to inner ear loss (sensorineural) and not usually reversible.

Some hearing loss, however, is conductive. This means sound cannot get to the inner ear due to obstruction in the canal (wax, infection, abnormalities) or problems with the ear drum and bones of hearing.

I would encourage patients with hearing loss to get checked out by a professional. A good start is to have the ears checked and cleared of wax at which point a proper assessment of the ear health can be made. After this hearing tests and occasionally referral to an ENT clinic may be advised.

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