Early Intervention is key to successful outcomes

Hearing loss is one of the most common disabilities in the world.

In fact, the World Health Organization estimates that about 5% of the entire world’s population has disabling hearing loss. That equals about 466 million individuals. Furthermore, they estimate that in 30 years from now, that number will rise to 900 million individuals.

There are many types of hearing loss with a range of consequences that depends on the individual and often unique type of hearing loss. The most common experience is a reduced ability to understand other people, particularly in noisy situations. This can impact how you interact with family and friends, making it difficult to learn at school and or perform your duties in the workplace competently.

The main types of hearing loss are sorted into three categories:

Sensorineural hearing loss, which means there is a problem occurring in either the inner ear or the auditory nerve, which delivers sound to the brain. Common causes include aging, noise damage, side effect of drugs or auditory tumours.

Conductive hearing loss, which means sound is not reaching the inner ear, usually due to an obstruction like impacted earwax or a foreign object or trauma from a ruptured eardrum or fluid.

Mixed hearing loss means the hearing loss is being caused by a combination of the two or genetic disorders, head trauma or infections.