Hearing Loss Facts

Facts

• Of the 236 million people in this country over the age of 3, about 20 million have some degree of hearing loss.
• Nearly 5 million cannot hear normal speech.
• Harmful workplace noise is a leading cause of hearing loss.
• Communication disorders-including disorders of speech and language, as well as, of hearing-carry an estimated $30 billion a year price tag in special education costs, medical costs, and lost productivity.

The Human Factor

Helen Keller felt her hearing loss was more devastating then her blindness because it isolated her from people rather than from things.

For the very young, hearing impairment and deafness can interfere with one of the major tasks for which the child's brain is primed; learning language. We know that language is more easily learned before the age of five than later; that children who are deaf have a harder time learning a spoken language; and that language acquisition is necessary for most other learning.

What We Know Now and How it Helps

• We can now identify hearing impairments at birth.
• We can distinguish between hair cell and nerve deafness (and therefore fit appropriate hearing aids).
• Some of today's hearing aids are normally able to compensate for outer hair cell loss.
• We can identify the genetic basis of some hearing impairments.
• Today's cochlear prosthesis, or implant-an electronic substitute for damaged or lost hair cells is more sophisticated than earlier versions and is now approved for both children and adults for whom hearing aids are useless.

So much more is known now than even a decade ago that there are those who realistically hope, through continued research, to find a "cure" for one or more forms of deafness.

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