When the hearing fades

New devices are hardly noticeable today
I beg your pardon? If you hear hard, you have to ask more often. That's how it happens to more than every third German at the age of 60. From the age of 70, even the number of people suffering from senile deafness doubles. According to HNOnet-NRW, a consortium of established ENT doctors, patients should therefore regularly attend the hearing test from the age of 50. More important, however, is that the hearing-impaired also wear their hearing aids, as otherwise the hearing will disappear irrevocably.

"Bad hearing permanently leads to a loss of hearing competence", explains Dr. med. Uso Walter, ENT doctor from Duisburg and CEO of HNOnet NRW, the backgrounds. "Just as a newborn at the beginning of life learns to hear and understand through acoustic stimuli, one also unlearns it when there are no acoustic stimuli." By wearing a hearing aid, this process is stopped because it allows acoustic stimuli again.

Image: Edler von Rabenstein - fotolia

Those who do not wear their hearing aid out of vanity risk having their hearing permanently reduced. Because with advanced age sufferers can only partially learn to hear again. ENT specialists therefore generally recommend early hearing care very early today. The ENT specialist decides together with the patient when the right time for care is and then issues a corresponding prescription. The statutory sick dogs pay a fixed amount, for which there are no additional payments hearing aids that can compensate for most of the hearing loss well. Even cosmetically, the new hearing aids are no longer noticeable today.

"The loss of hearing is usually a slowly progressing process," says Dr. Walter. "Affected persons therefore do not feel the loss of hearing competence until it is almost too late." The human brain is able to compensate for beginning hearing loss over a longer period of time. Therefore, regular check-ups from the age of 50 are very important. People who are often exposed to noise in their everyday lives, already in case of diseases of the ears, unfortunately, or in which familial accumulations occur should go before the 50th year of age for check-up. (Pm)