By: Seantd Vanane
Submitted: 2010-03-02 00:08:45 | Word Count: 565
People don't ever think that they will ever lose their sense of hearing. Sadly, some people will lose their sense of hearing whether they want to or not. The most important thing is to figure out what causes hearing impairment in the first place, how it does it and how it can be treated.
Aside from other abnormalities, babies are more at risk of getting hearing loss than anything else. Both children and adults of all ages can get hearing disorders. Other causes are a person's genetics, a person's medicine and others as well.
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Environmental noise that is loud and beyond normal decibel levels can cause a person to lose his or her hearing. A person whose house is near an airport is subjected to regularly loud noise that is damaging to the person's ears. Firing a gun is also very taxing on the ears as the sound levels are very high.
Methods to treat hearing impairments is through the use of what is called hearing aids. There is also no shortage in the kinds of hearing aids available as there are at the least 10 different classifications. All hearing aids, no matter what size or shape, will ultimately be an amplifier of surrounding sound to the user.
How and where exactly the hearing aid is supposed to be worn determines its classification. A device that is worn behind the ear is called BTE and is usually just made up of a case, tube and ear molds. BTE is a very common and likened device as the device is practically worn outside the ear, so moisture and wax cannot damage the whole device.
A different type of hearing aid that is making waves in the hearing impaired community is what is called a cochlear implant or a bionic ear. The cochlear implant needs to be surgically implanted in a person, behind the targeted ear and just underneath the scalp. The implant works just like our natural cochlea in that it collects, funnels, converts and transmits surrounding sound to the brain.
A microphone, speech processor, transmitter, receiver, stimulator, tons of electrodes make up the cochlear implant. The whole procedure and the device itself are all very expensive and is out of the reach of ordinary citizens. Aside from the huge price tag, a person's hearing history, health, and other minor things are checked to see if the implants will have a high chance of success.
In a few years patients may not need mechanical replacements or hearing aids, as there might be a new technology called gene therapy. A person with damaged cochlea cells, may simply opt to have new cochlea cells grown from scratch. Unfortunately, this form of hearing treatment still has a long ways to go as it is still in the research and development phase.
Hearing loss is a big issue, and some types are incurable thus these hearing treatments will have to do for now. Only a doctor can say for certain which hearing treatment should be used by a person. It is hard to imagine a life without hearing.
