Ear Nose and Throat Disorder

Audiology

Ototoxicity is the property of being toxic to the ear, specifically the cochlea or auditory nerve and sometimes the vestibular system; it is commonly medication-induced.

Deaf blindness is a combination of sight and hearing loss that affects a person’s ability to communicate, to access all kinds of information, and to get around. Deaf blindness is not just a deaf person who cannot see, or a blind person who cannot hear. The two impairments together increase the effects of each. People of all ages can have a sight or hearing impairment. It may have been from birth, or due to deterioration later in life. But most deaf blind people have some vision and hearing.

According to the American Academy of Audiology, one in three people over the age of 60 experience   some type of age-related hearing loss. In people over the age of 85, this number increases to one in two. Age-related hearing loss is also known as presbycusis. Although age-related hearing loss is not a life-threatening condition, it can have a significant impact on your quality of life if left untreated.

Hyperacusus is a health condition characterized by over-sensitivity to certain frequency and volume ranges of sound, a collapsed tolerance to usual environmental sound. A person with severe hyperacusis has difficulty tolerating everyday sounds, some of which may seem unpleasantly or painfully loud to that person but not to others. It can be acquired because of damage sustained to the hearing apparatus, or inner ear. There is speculation that the efferent portion of the auditory nerve has been affected, efferent meaning fibers that originate in the brain which serve to regulate sounds. This theory suggests that the efferent fibers of the auditory nerve are selectively damaged, while the hair cells that allow the hearing of pure tones in an audiometric evaluation remain intact.