title: [Extensive hearing loss and deafness in adults].
abstract: Hearing and understanding are two related, yet different processes. Hearing is the perception of sound. It can be of enormous value to patients with severely impaired hearing, as it facilitates acoustic orientation. An understanding of speech, however, remains virtually impossible for most of these patients. Nevertheless, early habituation to their acoustic situation makes lip-reading much easier, thus enabling conversations to be possible in good listening environments. Severely impaired patients, however, are still not in a position to follow conversation in larger groups. Even with hearing aids and the deployment of the latest technology, sufficient help is not always given. Before making a decision on the use of these technical aids, the ENT specialist should discuss the needs of the particular individual with the hearing-aid specialist. Provided that residual hearing can be used to understand speech with the help of a hearing aid, intracochlear implantation of an electronic prosthesis is not indicated. A cochlear implant is indicated when there is a complete hearing loss on both sides. Such a profound loss means that sufficient understanding of speech is no longer possible, even with the assistance of the latest hearing aids. For most adults, deafness is a postlingual phenomenon. Adults who were born deaf or who lost their hearing in childhood tend to be unsuitable for cochlear implantation. Up to the age of six years, however, children born deaf can benefit considerably from a cochlear implant. Children who are provided with a cochlear implant shortly after becoming deaf also have a good chance of being capable of learning and understanding speech.
authors.affiliation: Universitäts-HNO-Klinik, Freiburg im Breisgau.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Laszig
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D012048:Correction of Hearing Impairment; D003638:Deafness / Q000209:etiology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D006310:Hearing Aids; D006311:Hearing Disorders / Q000209:etiology; D006801:Humans; D008085:Lipreading; D013069:Speech Reception Threshold Test
vernacular_title: Ausgeprägte Schwerhörigkeit und Gehörlosigkeit des Erwachsenen.