Tobacco smoke causes hearing loss in children!
Hearing is indispensable for maintaining verbal communication; It has a very important impact on the quality of life. Experts stated that various tests are applied to patients with hearing complaints to determine hearing loss, degree of loss and type of loss, and pointed out the importance of taking measures to prevent hearing loss; It warns against inserting foreign objects into the ear, keeping children away from cigarette smoke and not listening to loud music.
Every year, March 3 is commemorated as World Ear and Hearing Day.
Human beings have to use their sense of hearing to communicate. The sense of hearing that we use during verbal communication is the process of perception of sound by the cochlea and auditory nervous system.
The sense of hearing is indispensable for the acquisition of a native language, learning to speak and maintaining verbal communication. is a sense. A mild degree of hearing loss can negatively affect children's success at school.
Health status is determined by hearing tests
A patient complaining of hearing loss must first undergo a complete ENT examination, then various tests can be applied to determine whether there is hearing loss and, if so, its degree and type. Among these tests, we can list tuning fork tests, pure tone audiometry, tympanometry, otoacoustic emission tests, acoustic reflex tests, auditory evoked brainstem potentials (ABR) tests.
Hearing. What are the causes and risk factors of hearing loss?
Hearing losses;
1.Conductive hearing loss
p>2.Sensorineural hearing losses
3.We can classify them as combined hearing losses.
'Conductive' hearing losses, external auditory canal- Hearing losses that occur in eardrum and middle ear diseases. Among these:
- Congenital anomalies affecting the auricle and external auditory canal
-Ceremen plug (clutch)
- External ear canal foreign bodies in the ear canal
- External ear canal infections
- Tumors affecting the external ear canal
- Ear drum ruptures (perforation)
- Acute middle ear infections
- Middle ear infections with effusion (middle ear flu)
- Chronic middle ear infections
- Calcification between the middle ear ossicles
- Otosclerosis (calcification in the middle ear-inner ear connection).
Congenital hearing losses are divided into 2
'Sensorineural' hearing losses occur in diseases that damage the inner ear structures and auditory nerve. Congenital sensorineural hearing losses seen in children are a separate group in terms of their importance. Its incidence is 1-3 in 1000 babies.
Congenital hearing losses are divided into two as Genetic and Non-genetic hearing losses. Among the causes of non-genetic hearing loss:
-Infections experienced by the mother during her pregnancy (rubella, measles, toxoplasma, mumps, etc.)
-Ototoxic effects during the mother's pregnancy Use of medication (damaging inner ear structures)
-Premature birth
-Development of anoxia-hypoxia (deprivation of oxygen to the baby) during birth
-Hyperbilirubinemia (causing blood incompatibility). Other causes of sensorineural hearing loss include:
-Anisensorineural hearing loss
-Presbycusis (hearing loss due to aging)
-Hearing losses due to noise
-Meniere's Disease
-Hearing losses due to ototoxic drugs (aminoglycosideantibiotics, salicylates, cisplatin, some diuretics). Conductive, sensorineural, or combined hearing loss may occur after head trauma in which the ear bone is damaged. Once the disease causing hearing loss is detected, a treatment program is determined according to the situation.
Keep your child away from cigarette smoke!
For example; Avoid inserting any object into the external ear canal and trying to clean it, preventing children from inserting foreign objects into the external ear canal, preventing middle ear infections and ear infections. To prevent colds, these include ensuring that children are not exposed to cigarette smoke, treating middle ear infections in a timely and effective manner, not using ototoxic medications, and not listening to music loudly or with headphones.
Can hearing loss be treated?
Very simply, if the plug that blocks the external ear canal is cleaned, the hearing loss will improve and similarly, the problems that cause hearing loss will be eliminated. Hearing loss can be improved with the treatment of treatable diseases.
For example; treatment of otitis media, installation of a ventilation tube in otitis media with effusion lasting more than 3 months, repair of perforation in the eardrum with surgical intervention, chronic In middle ear infections, hearing loss can be corrected by surgically cleaning the inflammation and repairing damaged ossicles, if any, and by installing a suitable prosthesis to replace the calcified ossicles in otosclerosis.
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