The noise in cities, workplaces, technologies are not leaving deaf people at an earlier age. Today, surprisingly, children and adolescents consult for hearing problems caused by exposure to noise.
In the world, 360 million human beings suffer from disabling hearing loss, of which 32 million are children. There are 1,100 million young people between the ages of 12 and 35 at risk of deafness due to noise exposure. 60% of deafness in children is preventable.
In Colombia, studies suggest that approximately five million people have hearing problems, which is equivalent to 11% of the population, although the proportion increases to 14% in the active population, between 25 and 50 years of age.
“These data are worrisome since in this modern world, youth has taken excessive use of electronic devices, in permanent contact with games, music, attending discos, concerts, where noise goes beyond the 90 to 100 decibels”, says the neurootologist at the Medical Center and President of the Pan-American Association of Otorhinolaryngology.
According to Dr. Blanco, the ear is made to hear 24 hours a day, but without excesses in the way we are demonstrating. To avoid acoustic trauma, the listener must calibrate sounds to a maximum of 30-40 decibels, which he means loud enough for the user to hear and not loud enough for his neighbors to hear.
The specialist explains that when hearing for an hour, you should rest for half an hour; With this, the hair cells of the inner ear rest, recover and do not deteriorate so quickly. Noise deafness is called acoustic trauma and is frequent in people who work in workshops, factories and places with a lot of noise pollution, with inadequate protection.
According to Dr. Laura González, an audiologist at the Medical Center, since before we are born we are perceiving the world around us by hearing. The sense of hearing gives us the possibility to learn, develop and internalize oral language in a natural way. Hearing is essential for the proper development of the human being.
“The ear is essential for the development of both speech or the ability to emit sounds, as well as language or the ability to understand and use these sounds,” says the audiologist.
According to Dr. Blanco, newborn children can be deaf due to genetic problems, due to infections in the mother during pregnancy, such as rubella, syphilis, or due to having received treatment with ototoxic drugs, antimalarials, furosemin, and cytomegalovirus. Due to birth asphyxia, low weight, jaundice and prematurity, among others.
Hearing losses can be of congenital or acquired origin, that is, from birth or during life. Hence, the importance of hearing assessment at birth or shortly thereafter. It is important to be aware, for example, of hereditary and non-hereditary factors, complications during pregnancy, childbirth or after it.
“In all developed countries, all newborn children undergo hearing screening, using two devices called evoked potentials and otoacoustic emissions. This facilitates early diagnosis for early treatment,” says Dr., an audiologist at the Medical Center.
According to Dr. Ángela María, in older children the most frequent causes of deafness are mumps and meningitis and in adults presbycusis, deafness that begins after the age of 65, caused by the death of nerve cells and fibers. of the inner ear, caused by age.
Hearing loss is defined as the decrease or loss of hearing capacity, that is, a difficulty or impossibility to hear normally. It can be unilateral, affecting only one ear, or bilateral, if it affects both.
The causes of hearing loss in childhood are diverse. It is estimated that 40% of cases are due to genetic factors; 31% to infectious diseases, such as measles, mumps, rubella, and meningitis; and 17% to perinatal complications, particularly prematurity, low birth weight, and neonatal jaundice.
Today there are high-tech hearing aids that are capable of improving deafness, even if they are difficult cases. In the case of deafness where one ear is totally deaf and the other is functional, it is possible to make a wireless connection so that the good ear passes the sound to the bad one and thus recover better hearing in open places or in noisy places .
For the newborn who has lost hearing in both ears with total and profound deafness, there are cochlear implants. These consist of two parts: an external one, which goes behind the ear like a usual hearing aid, a little larger, and an internal part, which carries the electrodes that are inserted into the cochlea, surgically placed, in the temporal bone .
“The external one converts the sound into an analogous electrical wave, which passes to the internal part up to the electrodes, which are in charge of carrying the electrical stimulus through the auditory nerve and this takes them to the brain”, explains the doctor
The child must receive a special therapy called audioverbal, by specialized audiologists, for many years. The therapy is in charge of making the child speak and transform the electrical stimulus that she hears into a real fact that is the word.
In Colombia there are many patients with implants who live in remote places and who also do not have the money to go and receive this therapy. If the group of implants does not guarantee the patient the therapy, it is better not to implant it, because in the end we have the same thing: a patient with an implant and zero orality. It has been shown that if a child is not implanted before the age of three, the verbal response will be bad.
“For this reason, the EPS must worry about not delaying the authorization of the implant, since it is a serious detriment to the child. The younger the child is implanted, the better the results will be, for the benefit of the child, her family and for the state itself”, says Dr. Blanco.
According to Dr. Blanco, the best therapy in medicine is prevention, especially in hearing problems that can be prevented with public health measures. In children under 15 years of age, 60% of deafness cases are attributable to preventable causes.
However, the statistics show that only three out of ten people seek help and go to a specialist, and a smaller proportion accept the need to use hearing aids and other technological alternatives to improve their listening.