What are the different forms of hearing impairment?

What are the different forms of hearing impairment?

There are two main forms of hearing loss. One is sensory, meaning that the nerve does not efficiently transmit the sound that is given to it to the brain. The other form of hearing impairment is conductive, which means that there is some kind of obstruction in the system or amplifier that regulates sound. Those two main differences are made because if you have a sensory neuro loss, those are harder to treat, and patients need hearing aids because the nerve is involved. If you have a conductive hearing loss, then you usually have a mechanical problem; you either have wax or there is something wrong with the ossicles, and traditionally they can be treated with surgery. Hearing loss can also be divided into congenital, which means that a child is born with a hearing loss either from a developmental abnormality or a genetic abnormality in the brain, acquired hearing loss - probably the largest group - which is hearing loss from aging. Other things, like trauma and infections, can cause hearing loss as well. Those are what we typically call acquired hearing loss.