The main clinical manifestations of senile deafness

Senile deafnessMain clinical manifestations

Senile deafnessIt refers to the aging and degeneration of auditory organs that occur with age, which is manifested as bilateral symmetrical hearing loss, usually involving high frequency regions, affecting speech understanding, and gradually affecting low IF as the disease progresses. The main difference from other causes of hearing loss is that senile deafness has a greater impact on speech recognition and verbal communication skills. Patients often appear to be able to hear others, but they cannot understand the content of the speech. The sound is not known.” Senile deafness seriously affects the quality of life of the elderly, and has an increasingly large impact on social economy, culture and other aspects, and has gradually attracted widespread attention from the whole society.

Senile deafnessThe main clinical manifestations are as follows:

① Hearing loss: Hearing test is a sensorineural hearing loss, the degree of hearing loss is different, and the range of involvement varies;

2 The decline in speech recognition ability: the speech recognition rate is declining, especially in the noisy environment or the reverberating hall or speech speed is faster, the speech recognition ability is more obvious;

3 tinnitus;60%The above-mentioned senile deafness patients are accompanied by tinnitus, the degree of tinnitus varies, and the impact on patients varies from person to person;

4 cognitive decline: some patients with senile deafness have varying degrees of cognitive decline.

In general, bilateral sympathetic sensorineural spasms that gradually appear with age can be diagnosed as senile deafness by excluding other otologic diseases.

Senile deafnessThe cause is complex and is influenced by various factors in heredity and environment. It can degenerate synchronously with other organs of the body, or it can be different from the degradation of other organs. Therefore, the cause of senile deafness may be related to aging, but it may not be completely consistent with the mechanism of aging, and has its own particularity. Some genes related to senile deafness have been identified. These genes participate in the development and progression of senile deafness by participating in or regulating oxygen free radical metabolism, cell differentiation, and ion transport. Environmental factors associated with senile deafness include infection, drugs, noise exposure, and other diseases of the body.[Treatment strategy]　

Because the mechanism of degenerative changes in auditory organs in elderly patients with deafness is unknown, there is currently no effective treatment, and auditory rehabilitation is currently the main treatment. due toSenile deafnessIt is permanent and cannot be recovered once it occurs, so auditory rehabilitation is very important. Patients with mild to moderate senile deafness can improve their verbal communication skills by wearing hearing aids. According to the type and extent of hearing loss,Senile deafnessThe patient can choose the hearing aid that suits him or her. For patients with hearing loss on both sides, it is recommended to wear two hearing aids to make the sound heard more natural. In addition, for high frequency hearing loss exceeds70dBEspecially the hearing loss1kHzIn the above, hearing aids can not effectively restore their hearing sensitivity, cochlear implant is an effective treatment. However, because the degenerative changes in the auditory system of senile deafness are not limited to the cochlea, they may also involve changes in the auditory central system. Therefore, for senile deaf patients with degenerative changes in the auditory central system, cochlear implants Whether the implantation is effective or not is still controversial. Despite this, a large number of clinical studies in recent years have shown that patients with senile deafness can greatly improve their hearing and speech communication skills after implantation of a cochlear implant.

However, wearing a hearing aid and implanting a cochlear implant does not mean that all hearing and speech problems of senile deafness can be completely solved. It is also necessary for patients and their communicators to learn how to better improve communication. The patient should concentrate on listening to and observing the body language of the speaker’s gestures, facial expressions, and lip movements. When communicating with patients with senile deafness, the speaker can be close to the face, face to face with the listener, speak as clearly as possible and slow down the speech, if necessary, with gestures, facial expressions and lip movements, try to find a relatively quiet environment, most It is good to turn off the background sound, such as TV, radio, etc., to ensure that the information you are talking about can be effectively transmitted to the elderly deaf listeners.